Impressions of Rojava (2014).pdf (original) (raw)
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Rojava Revolution's stateless, egalitarian, and ecofeminist politics have deservedly attracted attention and interest from radical and progressive movements around the world. However, large sections of the international left have displayed an ambivalent attitude toward the invasion of the Rojavan canton of Afrin by the Turkish Armed Forces in early 2018, when it is high time to engage in extensive discussions on tactics and strategies of protecting and preserving of Rojava's radical political space. This panel addresses this debate critically, knowing that the very survival of the social and political gains of the Rojava Revolution is at stake. Here, we aim to sharpen the contradictions in a Left that is comfortably averse to confronting the dilemmas of survival imposed on a revolution in Rojava that is besieged, militarily and economically, on all sides. Inspired by Jodi Dean's dictum, "Resistance is not enough!", we also claim that the international left needs to approach politics proactively: a politics of seeking and targeting the strategic impasses faced by Rojava and other radical and subaltern movements, inside and outside Western metropolises. This panel identifies the basic intellectual and strategic outlines of such a politics, at a time when cynicism around "revolution" and "reform" continues to haunt the post Arab Springs and Green Movement Middle East. It will tackle the above debates through four co-developed but individually conceived papers that address the four coordinates of the impasse faced by the Rojava Revolution in colonialism, geopolitics, state theory, and political philosophy.
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Vrindavan, a small town in the Mathura district of Uttar Pradesh, India, is a land that claims for itself a long and rich historical lineage. It is reverently placed in the Hindu textual traditions that articulate the rich diversities that have surrounded it. In the present scenario, the historical past of Braj or Brajbhoomi1 is a contested terrain for claiming ‘many’ sacred histories, featuring in the micro-histories of the lives of uncountable saints and religious traditions that both contribute and depend on Braj for claiming historicity. Although the land of Braj claims for itself a rich, ancient historical past, much of what is remembered of the town of Vrindavan carries a strong reminiscence of the prevalence of rich syncretic traditions of the subcontinent’s medieval pasts. The present paper seeks to build on a similar premise, wherein it tries to trace a cultural history of Vrindavan as articulated through the presence of a strong Gaudiya Vaishnav community in the region from medieval times. This history is corroborated by a rich legacy of textual traditions that has given way to the rise of a world of folk and oral traditions in the land of Braj and Vrindavan. The prime intent of the article is to unravel the layers of this unique ‘remembered’ past of Vrindavan and the way it has designed and sculpted the social life of the town from historical to present times.