A3 Refereed book chapter or chapter in a compilation book
Radical Political Imagination and Generational Utopias: Gun Control as a Site of Youth Activism
Authors: Seppälä Mila
Editors: Heiskanen Benita, Butters Albion M., Kolehmainen Pekka M.
Publishing place: Leiden
Publication year: 2022
Book title : Up in Arms: Gun Imaginaries in Texas
Series title: European Perspectives on the United States
Number in series: 1
First page : 134
Last page: 163
ISBN: 978-90-04-51466-9
eISBN: 978-90-04-51467-6
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004514676_007
Web address : https://brill.com/view/book/9789004514676/BP000015.xml
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/176686873
This chapter explores radical political imagination in youth-led gun control advocacy groups in Texas, including the types of actions, activist subjectivities, and utopian visions for the future it has produced. It traces how the “absurdist direct action campaign” staged by a group of young women at the campus of The University of Texas at Austin in the fall of 2016 radically reimagined political action in the sphere of gun violence prevention. In the absence of political opportunities, the “Cocks not Glocks” protest used humor as a way to mitigate the precarious experiences and feelings of helplessness the Campus Carry law produced among certain segments of the campus community. Examining how radical imagination has been evoked in the Texas chapters of the national gun control movement March For Our Lives, the chapter discusses how a movement built upon an imagined generational community has led to a confluence of different issue-based groups, facilitating collective processes of imagining larger—even utopian—political projects that are uniquely “American” in nature. These examples of everyday resistance and broader collective action in Texas represent an important moment in the re-emergence of political hope among the Left in the United States that has been missing since “the Long Sixties.”
Downloadable publication This is an electronic reprint of the original article. |