On Trauma and The Necessity of Self Care

December 10, 2015 by Neel Ahuja

The level of personal investment is high in both the academic and the activist world; it is even higher when those two worlds overlap. I am a doctoral student at the University of Toronto, as well as a community activist and educator in the Jane and Finch community. After reading my Masters thesis, on neoliberalism and gentrification in Jane and Finch, a former professor encouraged me to apply for my Ph.D. Prior to that encounter, I never imagined that the academy was a place for me, as the higher I moved up the academic ladder, the more discrimination I experienced, in insidious ways. Activism and my community grounded me; it gave me a reason to subvert systems of white, patriarchal domination. However, these systems find ways of breaking you; your spirit, your drive and everything you work for. 2015 has taught me that burnout for activist/ academics is a real phenomenon, and what is really at stake is our mental health and well-being.

Cultivating Practice in 2015

December 02, 2015 by Neel Ahuja

2015 taught me that we each have a personal practice. As a Black female scholar, I am learning that what I do each day as an educator, a colleague, a community member, a relative, and a friend are parts of an evolving practice of truth-seeking and meaning-making. I am learning to develop and articulate a personal practice that is reciprocal and transparent.

Therefore, this piece is part of that articulation process.

Media Portrayals of Asian American Voters

November 17, 2015 by Neel Ahuja

By Ellen Moll, Michigan State University

As another presidential election cycle is underway in the United States, voters face, in addition to ad fatigue, mega-donors, and other absurdities of how the country currently elects its leaders, the news media’s increasing tendency to report on the “horse-race” aspects of elections. In addition to being a distraction from more substantial inquiry into the candidates’ positions, these horse-race analyses bear the added distinction of regularly reducing complex identities (ethnicity, gender, age, and others) into over-simplified, homogenized voting blocs. As election coverage intensifies, it will be valuable to look at media portrayals of Asian American voters in recent presidential elections; I will focus here primarily on mainstream news media outlets. Closer examination reveals that these portrayals are especially interesting in light of the way that Asian American citizenship historically has always been contested.

What Cyborgs Dream

November 12, 2015 by Neel Ahuja

Part 2 in our series on "Horror, Ghosts, and Hauntings". Reblogged with permission, original here.

To Read Part 1 in the series, click here.

By: Maile Arvin

Yes, I am telling you a story, but you may be reading another one.

— Eve Tuck and C. Ree, A Glossary of Haunting

We met at a conference. I had just presented a paper about how cyborgs and animals are organizing their own communities against settler colonialism, imperialism and white supremacy. Animals, for instance, are everywhere making important connections between factory farming and dispossession of Indigenous lands and ways of life. Cyborgs (Black and non-Black) are major leaders in protests against police murders of Black youth, as they are similarly criminalized and killed in the streets.

Several male professors, all human but one cyborg, challenged me. Were not my ideas rather romantic? they asked. I don’t know anything about cyborgs or animals, or race or colonialism, but I doubt what you say is really the case, they challenged flatly, eyeing me as if in disbelief not just of my arguments but of my very existence, standing plainly in front of the blue of a projection screen recently vacated by Powerpoint.

Why don’t you focus more specifically on the five-year historical period when humans realized animals were sentient and communicate across species? Now that’s a very interesting time period, they droned, their voices echoing around me as a familiar anger expanded in my chest. Still, they concluded, everyone knows neither animals nor androids have empathy. I met their arrogant stares with my own disbelief.

“I was speaking of solidarity, not empathy,” I said. Then I walked out of my own panel.