Postcool

• Main Author: Francesco Salvini
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cultural Studies Association 2012-05-01
• Series: Lateral
• Subjects: postcolonial capitalism; interventions; activism; militant research; raval; barcelona; urban; gentrification
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.25158/L1.1.9

In this article, I explore the question of organization in the context of postcolonial capitalism . I focus on the ways in which a small group of militants affected one another and their environment, the Raval (a neighborhood in Barcelona). The workshop allowed us to transform our own understanding of the situation we live in and to think about the ways in which we can intervene in it. The experience I address in this paper is a laboratory of audiovisual militant research in which I participated and that was informally termed postcool. Militant research is not only a committed analysis of the political relationships of exploitation of labor or in the urban space, but a problem-posing engagement with how capitalist relations affect the way in which we produce knowledge and the way in which our own production of knowledge can affect the political practices we enact against capitalist exploitation. Militant research is therefore a committed and collective production of common notions (common analytical tools and practices) for and by a political community, that allows for the production of knowledge useful for struggles.