Practising refusal as relating otherwise: engagements with knowledge production, ‘activist’ praxis, and borders
This special issue explores the concept of refusal through academic and
personal reflections, conversation, poetry, activism, and performative
practice. In this introduction, we first situate practices of refusal within very
specific locations of struggle and then frame these refusals as a practice
of relating otherwise. Relating otherwise is a ‘mode of engagement’ – not
a theory or method – that shapes relationships with ourselves, each other,
and the world. The introduction goes on to discuss how refusal practices
engage with (1) decolonial modes of knowing, (2) embodied, situated, and
relational ways of meaning-making, and (3) the undoing of existing
dichotomies within ‘activist’ practice.
Keywords: practices of refusal, relating otherwise, knowledge production,
‘activist’ praxis, borders
URN:NBN:fi:tsv-oa137167
DOI: 10.11143/fennia.137167
© 2023 by the author. This open access article is licensed under
a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Practising refusal as relating otherwise: engagements with
knowledge production, ‘activist’ praxis, and borders
Introduction
A wide range of disciplines have recently engaged with the concept of refusal. While the term was first
coined by Indigenous studies scholars (Simpson 2007, 2014, 2016, 2017; Coulthard 2014), many others
have since contributed to its conceptualisation. This includes interventions from scholars within anti-
Blackness studies (Campt 2017a, 2017b, 2019; da Silva 2018; Shange 2019; Karera 2021; Nxumalo
2021); pedagogical and educational studies (Fine et al. 2013; Tuck & Yang 2014; Rodríguez 2019;
Martino & Omercajic 2021; Raymond & Canham 2022); geography, environmental, and discard studies
(Zahara 2016; Joly et al. 2018; Wright 2018); anthropology and cultural studies (Murphy 2017; Rowe &
Tuck 2017; McGranahan 2018; Prasse-Freeman 2022); gender, women’s, and sexuality studies (Cahill
et al. 2019; Mengesha & Padmanabhan 2019); and migration, refugee, and border studies (Jones 2012;
Wrightson 2020; Newhouse 2021; Coultas 2022; Mitchell-Eaton & Coddington 2022; Meier 2023).
These contributions – particularly from Indigenous and Black feminist writers, activists, and
thinkers – inspired this special issue. This project grew out of an ongoing interdisciplinary dialogue
about refusal as a tool for understanding and conceptualising “everyday practices of struggle” (Campt
2019, 80). Our thinking about refusal also emerged from our engagement with different movements
against borders and our involvement in diverse anti-racist, trans-feminist, and abolitionist activist
https://doi.org/10.11143/fennia.137167
FENNIA 201(2) (2023) 141Aila Spathopoulou & Isabel Meier
collectives and spaces (e.g. Feminist Autonomous Centre for research 2023, the Feminist No Borders
Summer School) and anti-racist No Borders/border abolition groups mobilising for a world without
borders and prisons.
In August 2021, we chaired a Royal Geographical Society (RGS) conference session to reflect on the
politics of refusal in the context of border struggles. We asked how differently situated subjects enact
refusal in their struggles against a transnational regime that tries to impose borders into our everyday
lives. We have witnessed a politics of refusal to negotiate racial and colonial dominance embedded in
the state, humanitarian agencies, and transnational corporations in the context of the so-called
‘refugee crisis’ and the EU’s hotspot border management. We developed the idea for this Fennia
special issue from the RGS session and our continued contemplation of the following questions: How
can we refuse the reproduction of border(s) within our own research? How can we think, feel, act, and
write refusal as rooted in the desire for a methodological and epistemological shift and wider border
abolition (Spathopoulou & Meier 2020; Meier 2023).
Most of the contributing authors engage with refusal practices in the context of borders in a broader
sense. This includes nation-state/territorial borders; borders within activism, academia and research;
embodied and affective borders; borders between theory and practice; research and art; and between
human and more-than-human world. The special issue brings together voices, experiences, and
knowledges from a wide range of places – India, Malaysia, Uganda, Greece, the United Kingdom (UK),
Norway, Sweden, Canada, Iran, Afghanistan, France, and the United States (US). Rather than viewing
borders as static entities/lines with a determinate geographical location (at the boundary edges of
nation states), this collection contributes to scholarship interrogating the ways in which borders
become inscribed on people’s bodies and everyday lives in racialised and gendered ways.
This special issue encourages readers to reflect on how practices of refusal are a starting point for
“speculative gestures towards a horizon of border abolition, drawing on prefigurative, imaginative,
and representational acts that seek to collectively deborder spaces and embodied subjectivities”
(Carastathis et al. forthcoming). As Anderson, Sharma, and Wright (2009, 11) note in their special
issue, ‘No Borders as Practical Politics’, “the recognition and naming of people’s refusals to accept
borders is of crucial importance in the light of the typical response to calls for No Borders [as]
utopian and impractical”. In other words, the “everyday practice of refusing the border has existed
as long as borders have” (Anderson et al. 2009, 11). Many contributions in this special issue affirm
exactly this: struggles against borders are existing, ongoing, and everyday abolitionist practices of
refusal; they are not utopias.
This special issue is the product of much work and labour of love from many people: the brilliant
authors, the generous reviewers, Fennia’s editors, and us, the guest editors. This global and
interdisciplinary collection of beautiful papers, essays, personal reflections, and interventions engages
with (1) decolonial modes of knowing, (2) embodied, situated, and relational ways of meaning-making,
and (3) the undoing of existing dichotomies within ‘activist’ practice. This introduction frames these
engagements – with knowledges, meaning-making, and ‘activist’ practice – as practices of relating
otherwise; they embody different ways of relating to ourselves, others, and the world. This special
issue includes many artistic, visual, poetic, and conversational contributions, which help us unlearn
the rigid structures of ‘academic’ writing and dissolve the hierarchies between theory and empirical
‘data’ and between researchers and what/who is researched. The variety of formats and wide range
of differently situated voices, experiences, and knowledges is an important feature of our collective
reflections on the importance of decolonial, creative, and embodied modes of knowing and being.
We selected Fennia as a non-profit open access journal to publish with as it allows us to work with
so many different publication formats. It was important to us to be able to integrate essays, personal
reflections, intervention pieces, conversations and creative contributions including poetry, with more
traditional research articles. This encourages the inclusion of differently situated voices and refuses
the unequal epistemic and methodological barriers between those ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of higher
education institutions (also BRIDGES Collective 2022). As such, refusal is both the content and method
of this special issue. As Nayak (2019, 354–355) has shown, “method and content are mutually
constitutive and mutually contingent”; as such, “traditional fragmentation or partition between action
and thinking, practice and epistemology or activism and theory are transgressed”. In other words, our
142 FENNIA 201(2) (2023)Editorial
approach to this special issue, rather than being something distinct or exterior to its content and the
different positionalities that we embody, became an interconnected space of engagement. Throughout
the making, from its conception to the production process, we returned to ideas of transgressing
binaries between theory–praxis/activism, writing–research, outside–inside universities, logocentric–
embodied, and individual–collective.
We undertook extensive reflections and efforts to challenge the epistemic violence (e.g. in terms of
included voices, formats and languages) reproduced through academic publishing. Nevertheless, we
still encountered the constraints of ‘scholarly standards’ required by an international academic journal.
This included concerns with language editing requirements, terminology, and a distinction between
‘academic papers’ and ‘political intervention pieces’. We appreciated the journal editor’s openness and
ongoing dialogue with requests to make exceptions and slightly loosen these constraints.
This introduction proceeds as follows: the next section situates practices of refusal within very
specific locations of struggle – ongoing settler colonialism, Indigenous struggles for land and sovereignty,
and anti-Blackness and Black struggles for freedom and survival. We then preview how our contributors
engage with refusal as a ‘mode of engagement’ in (1) decolonial ways of knowing, (2) embodied,
situated, and relational ways of meaning-making, and (3) the undoing of existing dichotomies within
‘activist’ practice. The final section discusses the overall contribution of the special issue.
Practices of refusal and their specific locations of struggle
In 2007, Indigenous scholar Simpson (2007, 104–105) coined the term ‘ethnographic refusal’1 to
describe a methodology that “acknowledges asymmetrical power relations” and “refuses to write in a
way that might compromise hard won and always precarious tribal sovereignty”. Her writings question
the ethics, politics, and theories underpinning ethnographic research, which she contextualises within
ongoing systems and logics of settler colonialism that justify the acquisition of bodies, territories, and
knowledge (see Maldonado-Torres 2007; Simpson 2007; Tuck & Yang 2014). Simpson draws attention
to the Mohawk people’s refusal to engage with juridical categories that evolved from colonial violence
and dispossession and explores how their acts of refusal demand other political orders. The Mohawk
people’s refusal to ‘play the game’ recognises broader power imbalances entrenched in existing
orders; it exposes the falsity of the underlying promise of their inclusion and agency within the system
(Simpson 2017). These practices of refusal are generative in that they constitute a “redirection to ideas
otherwise unacknowledged or unquestioned” (Tuck & Yang 2014, 239). Simpson (2017, 21) also frames
refusal as a “theory of the political” that has been “pronounced over and over again.” Many scholars
have since used Simpson’s concept of ethnographic refusal to “redirect academic analysis away from
harmful pain-based narratives that obscure slow violence and towards the structures, institutions,
and practices that engender those narratives” (Zahara 2016, para. 2)
Indigenous scholars’ engagement with practices of refusal has always been situated within the
specific physical, spiritual, and psychological violence of ongoing settler colonialism (Simpson 2007,
2014, 2016; Coulthard 2014). As Simpson and Coulthard argue, settler colonialism seeks to “undermine,
deny, and otherwise overwrite Indigenous peoples’ practices and assertions of sovereignty, including
through legislative and juridical violence” (as cited in Wrightson 2020, 195). The two authors position
practices of refusal as part of Indigenous sovereignty and the ‘unruly’ theories and practices of ‘being’
and ‘doing’ (Raheja 2015, 28). Similarly, Simpson (2015, 19) argues that “Indigenous thought, which is
as diverse as the land itself, roots sovereignty in good relationships, responsibilities and deep respect
for individual and collective self-determination, and honoring diversity”. In short, Indigenous scholars’
engagement with practices of refusal is rooted in a practice of relating differently to land and place.
Indigenous scholars’ engagement with practices of refusal has always been situated within the
specific physical, spiritual, and psychological violence of ongoing settler colonialism (Simpson 2007,
2014, 2016; Coulthard 2014). As Simpson and Coulthard argue, settler colonialism seeks to “undermine,
deny, and otherwise overwrite Indigenous peoples’ practices and assertions of sovereignty, including
through legislative and juridical violence” (as cited in Wrightson 2020, 195). The two authors position
practices of refusal as part of Indigenous sovereignty and the ‘unruly’ theories and practices of ‘being’
FENNIA 201(2) (2023) 143Aila Spathopoulou & Isabel Meier
and ‘doing’ (Raheja 2015, 28). Similarly, Simpson (2015, 19) argues that “Indigenous thought, which is
as diverse as the land itself, roots sovereignty in good relationships, responsibilities and deep respect
for individual and collective self-determination, and honoring diversity”. In short, Indigenous scholars’
engagement with practices of refusal is rooted in a practice of relating differently to land and place.
Coulthard’s (2014) Red Skin, White Masks calls for a conceptual shift and reorientation in texts and
thinking about settler colonialism – from “struggles for land [… to …] struggles that are informed by
land (Coulthard 2010, 78 in Wrightson 2020). He argues that “it is a profound misunderstanding to
think of land or place as simply some material object of profound importance to Indigenous cultures
(although it is this too); instead it ought to be understood as a field of ‘relationships of things to each
other’” (Coulthard 2010, 79). Land, according to Coulthard, is a physical manifestation of relationships
as practised and lived. He also emphasises the generative nature of refusal: “enacting Indigenous
alternatives on the ground will bring us into productive confrontation with the colonial structures of
exploitation and domination” (Coulthard in Gardner & Clancy 2017, para. 16).
Another strand of thinking on practices of refusal emerged from anti-Blackness studies.
Contemporary writers such as Tina Campt, Saidiya Hartman, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Christina
Sharpe, Fred Moten, and Alexander G. Weheliye trace the genealogy of refusal back through a long
tradition of Black feminist activists and thinkers. The Combahee River Collective’s (1977, 210) ‘The
Genesis of Contemporary Black Feminism’ affirms that Black women such as Sojourner Truth, Harriet
Tubman, Frances E. W. Harper, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell have “always embodied,
if only in their physical manifestation, an adversary stance to white male rule and have actively
resisted its inroads upon them and their communities in both dramatic and subtle ways”. Anti-
Blackness scholarship draws on such Black feminist abolitionists and Black radical thinkers (e.g.
Frantz Fanon, Sylvia Wynter, Audre Lorde, and Hortense Spillers) when conceptualising refusal as a
way to disengage from structures of anti-Black violence. It is “the refusal to be a subject to a law that
refuses to recognize you. Its [sic.] defined not by opposition or necessarily resistance, but instead a
refusal of the very premises that have historically negated the lived experience of Blackness as either
pathological or exceptional to the logic of white supremacy” (Barnard Centre for Research on Women
2014 quoted in Sojoyner 2017, 527).
In 2015, Campt and Hartman created the Practicing Refusal Collective to initiate a new exploratory
dialogue on anti-Blackness in the twenty-first century. Campt’s (2019, 80) article, ‘Black visuality and
the practice of refusal’, frames the Collective’s work as a “desire to think through and toward refusal
as a generative and capacious rubric for theorizing everyday practices of struggle often obscured by
an emphasis on collective acts of resistance”. For the Collective, practices of refusal entail “the urgency
of rethinking the time, space, and fundamental vocabulary of what constitutes politics, activism, and
theory, as well as what it means to refuse the terms given to us to name these struggles” (ibid.).
Refusal is a practice of engaging with politics, activism, and theory otherwise. Collective member da
Silva (2018) draws on Spillers to conceptualise refusal as a praxis and theory that dis/orders colonial,
racial, and heteropatriarchal systems of violence. She frames refusal as a ‘mode of engagement’, a
practice of engaging differently that spans day-to-day life, political practice, activism, and academia.
Indigenous engagements and Black feminist thinkers remind us to contemplate refusal as “everyday
practices of struggle” (Campt 2019, 80). Refusal presents openings to rethink how we engage with
politics, activism, and theory, as well as the wider political frameworks that have strictly delineated
these engagements. Refusal practices are a ‘mode of engagement’, not an act of academic or activist
practice – they help us think beyond theory-practice dichotomies (e.g. being ‘actively’ and ‘passively’
engaged, figures of research like the scholar, activist, and/or participant). It also reveals the creative
and generative nature of refusals as practices to create different realities and ways of relating.
Engaging with decolonial modes of knowing
It has been eleven years since Tuck and Yang first published their widely influential piece,
‘Decolonization is not a metaphor’. The essay critiqued the way in which “the language of
decolonization has been superficially adopted into education and other social sciences” (Tuck &
144 FENNIA 201(2) (2023)Editorial
Yang 2021, 2) but has not challenged or refused underlying colonial frameworks. This special issue
hopes to encourage further dialogue on how colonial modes of knowing and being affect every
aspect of our lives as writers, thinkers, and activists. The contributions draw on a long tradition of
activism by Black and Indigenous feminist theory to challenge what counts as legitimate knowledge
and who is granted the right to produce and receive it. Many of the contributions interrogate
dominant forms of knowledge production and its roots in the coloniality of Western philosophy and
‘modernity’ (Wynter 1979; also Cusicanqui 2010; Lugones 2010; Mignolo 2011). They explore “ways
of being and knowing that are not shackled by colonial and imperialist politics of knowledge
production” (Dutta 2023, 548). They refuse to accept universality, researcher objectivity, and what
Quijano calls the coloniality of knowledge – "the mechanisms by which Eurocentric canons of
knowledge produced in the Global North become legitimised as the only valid ones” (Quijano 2000
quoted in BRIDGES Collective 2022, 10).
We, the authors of this introduction, passed through the German and Greek hegemonic school
system, entered higher education, and now teach and research at academic institutions in the United
Kingdom. As hooks (1994) reminds us, these European (higher) education systems are inherently
colonial. We inhabit uncomfortable positions as so-called ‘scholars’, a term that denotes a kind of
intellectual superiority. Therefore, it is important for us to acknowledge our own positionality within
these institutions and how our financial survival depends on them. In other words, our subjectivities
are shaped by certain privileges gained from being inside and, at least partially, recognised within and
by higher education institutions. Privileges drawn along the lines of race, class, and ableism have
facilitated our access into these spaces. Crucially, certain bodies move/transit easily/smoothly within
universities, while others encounter numerous obstacles impeding their very entry and survival
within. In colonial modes of knowing, some people become perpetual “onlookers while others are
always gazed upon” (Dutta 2023, 545).
Esfandyar Torkaman Rad’s (2023) contribution to this special issue – Radical understanding:
reflections on knowledge production, power, positionality, and practices of refusal within academic
research – explores how People of Colour researchers must adhere to specific rules and norms to
thrive in higher education institutions. As a PhD researcher in France, Torkaman Rad was encouraged
to assume the role of ‘native informant’, which “is inscribed as evidence in the production of the
scientific or disciplinary European knowledge of the culture of Others: from field-work through
[theorising]” (Spivak 1999, 66–67 in Torkaman Rad 2023, 255). Moreover, Torkaman Rad (2023, 255)
unpacks how he had to “prove his assimilation” and integrate the “right methods of knowledge
production”. He was repeatedly confronted with the assumption that it is “always the dominants
who produce knowledge about the dominated, that the South provides the ‘field’ and the North the
theory” (Khosravi 2019 in Torkaman Rad 2023, 255). His intervention talks us through his unfolding
PhD research journey and his own practices of refusing dominant methods of knowledge production
as a way of relating to research otherwise.
Vita Zelenska’s (2023) contribution, An article that refuses to write itself, reflects on the process of
researching and writing an article about carceral migration contexts in Greece to question academic
knowledge production on migration. Zelenska (2023, 263–264) reflects on their positionality as
researcher and activist to critique the paternalistic framing of those with migration ‘experience’ as
both “knowledgeable subjects” and “instrumentalised objects of knowledge”: “Migrants and refugees
[…] are often expected […] to convey knowledge in a certain way, that is most often the knowledge of
suffering and struggles”. This article includes sections of previous drafts to discuss how the paper
refused to write itself in ways that “both re-create the all too old separation in ethnography between
the self and the ‘other’, albeit in different ways […] while the first one re-produces the romanticised
figure of the resistant subject, the second one possibly contributes to the ghosting of migrants and
refugees as it chooses the ‘local’ as the one who is making the refusal ‘on behalf of’” (Zelenska 2023,
264). The text embodies the author’s own struggles and conflicts as an engaged scholar researching
knowledge production on migration and their attempts to avoid reproducing the state’s binaries of
‘migrant’ and ‘citizen/local’. Zelenska’s contribution asks who counts as a legitimate subject of
knowledge production on migration and how ‘migrant’ figures are reproduced through various
representations and discourses.
FENNIA 201(2) (2023) 145Aila Spathopoulou & Isabel Meier
Lena Gross, Sepandarmaz Mashreghi, and Emma Söderman’s article, Refusal – opening otherwise
forms of research, reflects on their individual decisions not to write about something they encountered
in their research. The authors, who are situated within migration and Indigenous studies, converse
with Simpson (2007) and Tuck and Young (2014) to explore refusals to “disseminate and/or engage
theoretically” with their findings as a “direct disobedience of the principles of academic research,
which grants to the academy the inherent right of knowing” (Gross et al. 2023, 155). While the authors
did not originally adopt ethnographic refusal as a method and/or subject matter, the refusals to
“write/ask about” emerged as an “ethical and political choice” throughout their research encounters
(Gross et al. 2023, 161). These refusals are generative and (re)create a praxis of ‘re-existence’ that led
the authors to change their original topics and research questions.
Discussions of ‘decolonisation’ and a commitment to reforming academic institutions in Europe
and North America garnered significant attention after the 2015 #RhodesMustFall student protests
and the global Black Lives Matter movement. However, the everyday exclusions unfolding through
the dominance of the English language are rarely considered in such debates. The domination of the
English language is evident in how knowledge is produced, shared, and published in ‘world-class’
international journals (see previous Fennia publication on this topic: Kallio & Hyvärinen 2017). Several
contributions in this special issue refuse this form of linguistic imperialism by including text, poetry,
terminology, and dialogue from other languages. As authors based in the United Kingdom, whose first
language is not English, we have experienced this exclusionary effect in academia first-hand. We have
had papers rejected for language and grammar issues, been left out of academic engagements, and
been subjected to patronising and, at times, infantilising comments. These language-based exclusions
intersect with gender, race, and citizenship as well as Central/Northern versus Southern/Eastern
European dichotomies, with Women of Colour racialised as migrants experiencing the most severe
position of exclusion.
In Languaging as refusal, Kolar Aparna and Saba Hamzah ask: ‘What is the language of refusal?’ The
authors consider the power of language and ‘languaging’ as a practice of “refusal to refuse in one
dominant language” (Kramsch et al. 2015 in Aparna & Hamzah 2023, 215). They (2023, 216) reflect on
their embodied positionalities as mothers, academics, daughters, lovers, and sisters to wonder, “How
to speak from our burning guts that refuse to refuse in a language that doesn’t speak to our daily lives
and struggles?”. Aparna and Hamzah engage with texts, experiences, excerpts (from theses-related
events), visuals, and poetry combined with biographies, traumas, and memories to reflect on day-to-
day experiences in academia and beyond. They (2023, 215, 227) self-define beyond ascribed categories
and roles (e.g. the ‘bridge of “diversity”’ in academia) and invite us to engage in a poetics of refusal as
“an ongoing struggle to name our struggles” through languaging.
Engagement with embodied, situated, and relational ways of meaning-making
The next section of the special issue attends to enactments of refusal through the embodied,
situated, and relational experiences of racialised and gendered people. These refusals highlight
how intersecting oppressive structures affect differently situated people, while exploring generative
ways of making meaning of lived experiences and creating different knowledges, socialities, and
practices of care.
Rapti Siriwardane-de Zoysa, Vani Sreekanta, David Mwambari, Simi Mehta, and Madhurima
Majumder consider their positions as scholars, activists, educators, and ‘development’ practitioners
in The unruly arts of ethnographic refusal: power, politics, performativity. They draw “metaphoric
inspiration from ‘unruliness’ (of knowing/being) as a deeply embodied and phenomenological
notion, which is irreducible as much as it is unteachable” (Rosa 2022 in Siriwardane-de Zoysa et al.
2023, 170). The authors (2023, 175) review their ethnographic research praxis across coastal India,
Malaysia, and Uganda to consider how “complexities develop because ethnographic research is
itself an embodied field of social relations”. They (2023, 175) explore how to creatively work with
refusal, noting that “we bring so much of our own person into encounters, inviting people to bring
themselves into a relationship with us and our work”. While attending to intersectional hierarchy-
146 FENNIA 201(2) (2023)Editorial
making, they (2023, 180) see practices of refusal as “the revealing of self and others […] a basic right
in safeguarding lifeworlds” that challenges scientific ‘objectivity’ “as a means of countering as well as
reinforcing ‘truth-telling.’” Refusal is a “locally situated and historically contingent sensibility” that is
performative in nature (Siriwardane-de Zoysa et al. 2023, 169). According to the authors, "the arts of
seeing, being, and doing refusal […] may span very embodied practices of refusal, encompassing
verbal and non-verbal cues that are rather felt and sensed, than articulated or enacted” (Siriwardane-
de Zoysa et al. 2023, 179). In other words, “to sense as refusal, is as important as learning to read
cues that signal moments and spaces of refusal, as fleeting as they may seem” (Siriwardane-de
Zoysa et al. 2023, 179). This contribution highlights the importance of the sometimes difficult-to-
grasp relational, embodied, and situated dimensions of research encounters. It also reveals the
creative and transformative capacities of embodied encounters as a space of transformation, (self-)
recovery, and healing (also hooks 1991; Simpson 2014, 2016; Nxumalo 2021).
Erene Kaptani’s article, A generative refusal: body inclusive methods with racialized women in
knowledge creation, also explores how to creatively work with refusal through the body. Kaptani (2023,
185) draws on examples from her theatre practice and workshops with young women racialised as
migrants to conceptualise the body as an act of refusal that challenges dominant logocentric
methods in social research and the “Cartesian split between mind and body, rational and irrational”.
The article is positioned within a long tradition of activism by Black and Indigenous feminist theory
as uses body-inclusive theatre-based methods to centre the racialised and gendered body within
knowledge production. Embodiment is an important part of research; yet, “an evolved view from
the perspective of the moving body has not developed due to the limited research available on
body-inclusive methods for social inquiry in the logocentric domination of knowledge production”
(Kaptani 2023, 185). Arts-based approaches that centre the moving body and research participants
as co-creators “create different spaces of knowledge and ways of making meaning of lived
experiences, as well as repeating, and fostering self-definitions” (Kaptani 2023, 186).
Kaptani situates these different knowledges and ways of making meaning within the particular lived
experience of everyday bordering (e.g Yuval-Davis et al. 2019). She explores how bordering practices
‘block’ movement: they “do not only remain within the border control and institutional spaces but
rather permeate everyday life through gestures, statements, gazes, and spatial arrangements”
(Lafazani 2021 in Kaptani 2023, 189; also Noble 2005, 2008). In her article Kaptani (2023, 189) focuses
on how gendered and racialised bodies emerge in public spaces and how, “by working with a moving
body methodology”, the forces creating affective intensities of everyday bordering become visible.
This resonates with our own writing on how “bordered reality is material, conceptual, affective, and
cognitive; it is not reducible to the geopolitical borders around nation-states but refers to the ways in
which states compete and collaborate to run those borders through our bodies in our everyday lives”
(Spathopoulou & Carastathis 2020, 4). The border is ‘multiplied’ as it is ‘everywhere’ and structures
even our most intimate experiences by working through affective registers and occupying emotional
and mental space (Meier 2020).
Kathryn Cassidy, Rana Amiri, and Gill Davidson also examine how racialised and gendered borders
are inscribed on migrant women's bodies. Their article, Reading for refusal in UK maternity care:
entangling struggles for border and reproductive justice, discusses practices of refusal within the
provision of state maternity services in the UK. The authors demonstrate how migrant women’s
reproductive lives are specifically targeted by immigration and border regimes in a deeply gendered
and racialised “complex of violence” (Pain 2015 quoted in Cassidy et al. 2023, xx). This complex of
violence includes direct harms, the creation of violent conditions, and violence itself. The authors
draw on participant observation and secondary sources to illustrate how refusing early antenatal
care opens pathways for bordered women to create the ‘care-ful(l) conditions’ they need and want
during pregnancy; such practices of refusal are not only struggles for reproductive justice, but also
border abolition. These care-ful(l) conditions include “the creation of alternative spaces where
women could come together to others with similar experiences and be heard; affiliative actions with
diverse organisations that the women felt could have a positive impact on their efforts to secure
their own lives and those of their children; directly advocating for improved conditions that would
alleviate the harms of border and immigration regimes” (Cassidy et al. 2023, xx). In refusing the
FENNIA 201(2) (2023) 147Aila Spathopoulou & Isabel Meier
conditions of National Health Service (NHS) maternity and early antenatal care, migrant women
created alternative knowledges, socialities, and care practices/spaces beyond state institutions.
This special issue attempts “to honor the multiple knowledge forms and modalities of knowledge
production” (Dutta 2023, 548) situated in the experiences and generative qualities of such embodied
refusals. The everyday enactments of refusals included here show how people create alternative and
embodied knowledges to self-define, address their needs beyond the state, and create alternative
socialities to come together without state institutions. Such refusals generate everyday, abolitionist
forms of intersectional care (see Thompson 2021; also FAC 2023) that challenge hegemonic forms of
so-called ‘care’ (e.g. institutional and paternalistic ‘care’ that controls and borders racialised and
gendered women’s bodies and manufactured forms of ‘care’ framed through mainstreamed ethics).
Abolitionist care is a praxis that draws on Black feminist principles of care and collectivity; it refuses
the care of hegemonic state institutions (including the purported care institutions like hospitals,
social work, camps, and asylum centres). We are inspired by Jones’s (2022) call for an ‘intimate
abolitionist movement’ that is deeply motivated by commitment, care, and love.
Engagements toward undoing dichotomies within ‘activist’ practice
The final section of the introduction discusses the importance of undoing dichotomies within
‘activist’ practice, including common distinctions like ‘theory’ and ‘activism’, the ‘embodied’ and the
‘logocentric’, ‘human’ and ‘nature’, and ‘active’ and ‘passive’. This set of contributions emphasises
the need to approach theory-making as fundamentally activist praxis, and activist praxis as an
essentially theoretical endeavour. Black feminism has long challenged the distinction between
theory and everyday ‘activism’ (e.g. Combahee River Collective 1977). For example, hooks reclaims
theory from academia by revealing the false binary between (feminist) theory and (feminist) practice:
“when our lived experience of theorizing is fundamentally linked to processes of self-recovery, of
collective liberation, no gap exists between theory and practice. Indeed, what such experience
makes more evident is the bond between the two – that ultimately reciprocal process wherein one
enables the other” (hooks 1991, 2).
The article Refusals, radical vulnerability, and hungry translations takes up a conversation with
Richa Nagar about how questions of refusal emerge in her intellectual and political journey. We
discuss the messy boundaries between academia and activism, divergent forms of dissenting
subjectivities, and the power of their refusals. Nagar reflects on journeys with her saathis in multiple
sites of engagement – multidimensional movement spaces of Sangtin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan in
Sitapur, the Parakh Theatre in Mumbai, and her classes at the University of Minnesota. She reflects
on the categories of ‘academic’ and ‘activist’, and how these categories are “often simplistically
presumed to be separate from one another, but their separation is also often problematically
layered onto two other dichotomies: one between ‘the intellectual’ and ‘the political’ and another
between ‘the individual’ and ‘the collective’” (Nagar & Swarr 2010 in Nagar et al. 2023, 267). She
explains that “The hierarchies engendered by this triple layering are central to the epistemic violence
that often reduces lived struggles of movements and collectives to data or stories (read: activist,
everyday, political, grassroots) to be explored, assembled, studied, and shaped into arguments by
theorists and analysts (read: academic, intellectual, individual, expert)” (Nagar et al. 2023, 267). For
Nagar, “knowledge is movement of the heart–mind–body–spirit. Such full-bodied movement
mobilizes words, actions, art, dreams, and passions. One cannot learn objectively from such
movements – we must, in fact, become movements” (Nagar et al. 2023, 268). She conceptualises
“hungry translation” as a ‘hunger’ for movement; the “non-stop striving for ethical retelling – an ever
evolving relation between self and other – where each one constantly works to listen, feel, trust, and
retell ethically, despite the challenges of walking together on an uneven terrain, and despite an
understanding that each retelling will be incomplete and imperfect” (Nagar et al. 2023, 270).
‘Activism’ is often portrayed as organised politics – protest events, meetings, boycotts, sit-ins –
where people come together to speak about and act against systems of oppression. However, this
special issue also emphasises the importance of practices, feelings, and engagements that are not
148 FENNIA 201(2) (2023)Editorial
traditionally considered politically relevant in struggles for justice (see Spathopoulou & Meier 2020;
Kallio et al. 2021). This includes an often invisibilised, embodied, and emotional activist praxis that
Nagar calls a “praxis of love” (Nagar et al. 2023, 270).
Michele Lobo, Abha Bhagwat, and Dharmaraj Patils (2023, 240) explore “embodied feelings of
generative more-than-human love” as an activist practice that refuses the slow, brutal violence of
global warming and environmental pollution in India. Their article, Performing arts of embodied
refusal amid anthropogenic climate change: the Salim Ali Biodiversity Park and Bird Sanctuary, Pune,
India, takes us to Pune, a rapidly growing city in the state of Maharashtra in western India. The three
co-authors’ differently situated experiences engage in activist refusals of anthropogenic climate
change and toxic environmental pollution. Their piece interrogates embodied performances –
poetry, city walks, and a participatory mural painted by the Save Slim Ali Sanctuary Action Group –
to illuminate how the slow violence of global warming and environmental pollution affects bird
habitats, migratory routes, species diversity, and song. They demonstrate the potential of
multilingual, transnational, and decolonial ecological activism as an embodied, feelings-based
generative practice. The authors articulate embodied refusal as “place-based collective action and
writing that is multilingual, visceral and generative in affirming bird life and thriving more-than-
human worlds” (Lobo et al. 2023, 230)
This special issue also unpacks the transformative possibilities of turning away, withdrawing, and
non-action as both politically engaged and a refusal to fit into specific norms. In hegemonic political
spaces, practices of refusal are often read as giving up, passivity, or ‘doing nothing’. However, as
Kahina Meziant (2023, 245) asks, “do refusals have to be declared in order to be counted as such?
What do we make of more oblique refusals?” Meziant’s contribution, On reading non-participation as
refusal, draws on her double role as a volunteer and PhD researcher at a northeast England charity
supporting migrants’ and refugees’ social inclusion. She reflects on the charity’s micropolitical
dynamics; the organisation is unaware that they impede migrants’ active participation and “contribute
to [an] apparent passivity” (Meziant 2023, 244). Meziant discusses two types of refusals: noncompliance
and departure. Members may not comply with charity leaders’ expectations, either by quitting, not
participating, or not adhering to arbitrary rules. The author proposes that “this assumed passivity
reveals a paradox in […] many charities aiming to centre the voices of people with lived experience”
(Meziant 2023, 249). She advocates a more careful reading of asylum seekers’ non-participation in
UK charity activities supporting their social inclusion. Specifically, refusal as a concept should be
applied to migration charities (and the non-profit sector in general) as it helps us deconstruct “the
absence of participation and assumed apathy or indifference in light of a discrepancy between the
organisation’s intentions and the outcomes” (Meziant 2023, 244). Contextualising refusal practices
within everyday struggles for justice allows us to move beyond dominant representations and
binaries. It illustrates how refusal is not mere passivity or a single act of resistance, but an ongoing
practice of relating to ourselves, others, and the world otherwise.
Many contributions to this special issue embrace everyday ‘activist’ praxis as a personal, academic,
artistic, and political struggle. They use embodied experiences and feelings to interrogate broader
social-historical structures, processes, and contexts shaped by coloniality, race, gender, patriarchy,
ecological genocide, and citizenship status. The contributors complicate the figure of the ‘activist-
scholar’ by revealing its nuanced positionalities; they write as academics, activists, poets, artists,
educators, development practitioners, mothers, lovers, daughters, and sisters.
Refusals as ongoing journeys
This special issue and its contributions highlight practices of refusal as generative, collective, embodied,
and hopeful. They are challenging labours of love and engagements with ourselves, others, and the
world. We frame practices of refusal as relating otherwise; many contributions reveal the generative
force of creating different knowledges, meaning-making, socialities, and care. The contributions also
highlight creative ways to navigate and enliven everyday struggles for justice. There is no singular way
to engage in abolitionist, decolonial practices of relating otherwise. Rather, this special issue showcases
FENNIA 201(2) (2023) 149Aila Spathopoulou & Isabel Meier
multiple modes of engagement – day-to-day practices of love, care, connection, and healing. This
resonates with Simpson’s (2017, 245) definition of generative refusal as “withdraw from a politics of
recognition and to instead turn inward to rebuild internally, to seek reciprocal recognition through
meaningful relationships in the present”.
At the same time, this special issue embodies the ‘limitations’ or, rather, ‘incompleteness’ of struggles
for justice. As Siriwardane-de Zoysa et al. (2023, 180) emphasise in their contribution: “the active un/
making of refusal as art and social/communicative practice is never work that is ‘complete’”. Many
authors illustrate the inherent contradictions between one’s (multiple) positionalities, activisms, and
writings. The texts, poems, dialogues, images, and performances embody the unresolvable conflict(s)
one has with one’s self and the complex realities a person is engaged in. These unresolvable conflict(s),
however, open up productive spaces of change and hope when we, in Nayak´s (2017, 208) words,
“occupy the tensions, dialectics, aporia and inherent contradictions” instead of resolving them. Hartman
(2008, 12) calls this the “as-yet-incomplete project of freedom,” arguing that “the refusal to fill in the
gaps and provide closure […] is the imperative to respect black noise – the shrieks, the moans, the
nonsense, and the opacity, which are always in excess of legibility and of the law and which hint at and
embody aspirations that are wildly utopian, derelict to capitalism, and antithetical to its attendant
discourse of Man”. Conceptualising struggles for justice as ‘incomplete’ foregrounds the ever-becoming
nature of theory and everyday ‘activist’ praxis from which hopes and futures grow. Nagar writes,
“liberated theory is born in this braid, like flowers grow on a vine: it is immersed in ongoing journeys, it
strives for ethical relationships, and it is committed to unstoppable dreams and labours that yearn for
justice. And liberated theory does all of this without assuming a priori what justice or ethics look like in
a given time, place, or struggle” (in Nagar et al. 2023, 271) We are inspired by Nagar’s concept of the
‘ongoing journey’, in which, according to her, the hope for justice is found rather than “in the expectation
of arrival” (Nagar et al. 2023, 271). Therefore, we dedicate this special issue to the continuation of the
journey and the yearning that the practices of refusal narrated and enacted here will inspire us to
imagine, think, dream, feel, and desire other ways of relating to ourselves, each other, and the world.
AILA SPATHOPOULOU (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6563-5232)
DURHAM UNIVERSITY and the Feminist Autonomous Centre for research
ISABEL MEIER (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7539-1104)
NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSITY
Notes
1 Sherry B. Ortner first described the term of ethnographic refusal as “a kind of bizarre refusal to know
and speak and write of the lived worlds inhabited by those who resist” (Ortner 1995, 187–188). For
her, this refusal results in ‘thin’ research on resistance and an ethnographically ‘thin’ description of
‘internal politics of dominated groups’. She locates these refusals in the crisis of representation and
(im)possibility of ‘truthfully’ portraying others, debates that were inspired by Edward Said´s work on
Orientalism, Gayatri Spivak´s writings on the subaltern, and James Clifford´s engagement with
ethnographies (Ortner 1995). While significant, Ortner’s use of ethnographic refusal is conceptually
different from how we approach the term in this special issue, so we have not included her in this section.
Acknowledgements
The authors are deeply grateful for the wonderful contributions to this special issue from all the
authors, whose remarkable work inspired the collection. We would also like to thank all the reviewers
who so kindly took the time to thoughtfully review the manuscripts and offer all of us insightful
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6563-5232
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7539-1104
150 FENNIA 201(2) (2023)Editorial
comments. A special thank you to Rebecca Helman and Cetta Mainwaring whose comments and
suggestions have been tremendously helpful to further develop our ideas and strengthen the
arguments of this introduction.
Our work on this special issue as well as the research and writing of this introduction has been
supported by Aila Spathopoulou´s ECR Leverhulme Fellowship ECF-2021-526: Refugee or return:
changing spatio-temporalities of European refugee asylum and Isabel Meier´s ECR Leverhulme
Fellowship ECF-2021-664: Everyday Politics of Survival and Hope at European Borderscapes.
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