CREATING A REVOLUTIONARY CULTURAL FRONT

Back by popular demand and the ongoing importance of political organizing.

“We don’t need any more writers as solitary heroes. We need a heroic writers’ movement: assertive, militant, pugnacious.” - Toni Morrison

Inspired by work undertaken through Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG), this course will examine what it means to create a revolutionary cultural front. It calls upon the revolutionary culture worker: the artist, the writer, the poet, the playwright, the curator, the organizer, the educator—anyone who feels a responsibility to subvert, challenge, and change the contours of society.

We will look to the cultural interventions both through the history of Palestinian resistance as well as across liberatory struggles here at home. A revolutionary cultural front encompasses the tools we need to not only interpret and critique art, literature, and media, but also use them to bring forward new narratives—to change hearts, minds, and beliefs (starting with our own). Juliano Mer Khamis, founder of the Freedom Theatre in Jenin, believed that the Third Intifada would be a cultural intifada. What does that mean? For those of us agitating against the war on Gaza from within the heart of empire, it means first looking to the storied lineage of cultural blocs formed during periods of massive awakening. It means returning power to the people, bringing the war home, acting up.

To embrace revolutionary cultural work is to set aside individualistic notions of expression, bridging creativity with material effectiveness and heeding calls to create in service of liberation. Theory and knowledge cannot be divorced from action; cultural work prepares us for material work. The role of the revolutionary culture worker is not only to create consciousness but also to transmute ideas into feelings and feelings into action. Equally as important as cultural production is the organizing and direct actions that disrupt culture itself. Organizing is a pedagogical tool. Combining historical education, literary and artistic analysis, and creative production, we study the past to help us intervene in the present in order to alter the future.

INSTRUCTOR

Naib Mian is an editor, writer, and organizer based in New York City. He edits interpretive content for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, features for Acacia Magazine, and multimedia and reportage for the South Asian Avant Garde Anthology. Having reported in Chicago, Cape Town, and New York, his writing, published in The New Yorker, The Nation, Lux Magazine, and Acacia Magazine, focuses on politics, labor, arts and culture, queerness, religion, and the shifting intersections of these realms. He has organized as part of The New Yorker Union and with The NewsGuild of New York and most recently has been working on labor organizing through Writers Against the War on Gaza and Arts and Culture Workers for Palestine. www.naibmian.com
Image credit: Ghassan Kanafani: Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestinian Question
Tuesdays, 6-7:30 PM EST
​Online on Zoom.
90 minute sessions, 5 weeks
July 30th-August 27th, 2024
$125 - $375 Tuition
Select scholarships and solidarity rate discounts available upon request.