XOXO: Love Letters to Our Friends, Hate Mail to Our Frenemies

Readers of this blog may find this recently compiled reader on the ambivalence of occupy and/or evacuate useful.

XOXO: Love Letters to Our Friends, Hate Mail to our Frenemies. On Commitment and Withdrawal.

Edited by Kelly Gallagher, Becky Nasadowski, and Heath Schultz. 244 pages.

We’ve opted not to provide another critique of the summit-hopping days of the counter-globalization movement or a discussion on the impossibility of artists to engage with a radical praxis being worked out in the streets. Instead we’ve found ourselves reflecting on an ‘exuberant politics’ that describes forms of living in relationships with those you care for, and the struggles we commit ourselves to. This might be described as the exuberance of an embodied joy arrived at through the building of care, love, commitment, and experimentation with our friends and comrades. This altered definition of exuberance notes long-term temporality, or a desired split with capitalist time and space, and locates liveliness not in a moment, an action, or event but over time through communal efforts. In this reader these ideas are reflected primarily in exploring two themes that we might crudely refer to as commitment and exodus. —From the Introduction

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