First Reading Group

Note: This event is only for members of the UCIRNF Collective Zine-making Group

Pre-reading Notes

Intention & Grounding

In preparation for our second zine on institutional memories of UCI student movements, particularly the anti-apartheid divestment campaign in the 90s, we raise a series of questions.

1. What does it mean to write a history of past resistance, when our students movements have been co-opted, appropriated, and hyper-celebrated by the UC administration?
2. Why do we want to do this historiographical practice? What does the mere presence of memory and archive do for contemporary political organizing on campus? Do they automatically translate into actions and inspirations?
3. ‘How do we think carefully about the differences between the past and the present UC Divest campaign? Is it possible to learn from our ancestors’ mistakes?’How do we think carefully about the differences between the past and the present UC Divest campaign? Is it possible to learn from our ancestors’ mistakes?
4. What is a “win”? Before our historiography, where’s our critical analysis?
5. What are the existing types of action on campus whose histories we are trying to trace and retrieve?

Logistics

Please browse the pdfs below and read the following chapters of Neoliberal Apartheid before our meeting

1. Introduction: Racial Capitalism and Settler Colonialism
2. South Africa and Palestine/Israel: Histories and Transition
3. Conclusion: Neoliberal Apartheid

for the NLF reading:

1. preface
2. interview with amilcar cabral (p. 156-169)
3. revolutionary strategy and the role of the vanguard (p. 319-328)

We recommend people just skim through the names of the essays/skim through the book. The broader point of the book as a whole is that there are such rich deep histories and genealogies of revolution that get buried and that in itself is part of the counter-insurgency

Please take notes and prepare some comments and questions in relationship to our second zine project!

Please RSVP below!

Additional Readings

Walter Rodney: a Lightning Rod of Black Working Class Power

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