Work the Contradictions!

Institutional Power + Minority Difference

What happens to grassroots movements when they get access to normative power? How do we resist capture? What traditions, theories, and cautionary tales should we heed? Roderick Ferguson joins us to discuss these questions, and much more.

About Our Guest:

Roderick Ferguson is the William Roberston Coe Professor of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies and Professor of American Studies at Yale University. He has written several books, many of which became immediate classics for people trying to navigate dynamics of power, protest, and capture within the higher education institution where they (we) do our work. Some highlights include We Demand: The University and Student Protests (University of California, 2017), The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogies of Minority Difference (University of Minnesota, 2012), and Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique (University of Minnesota, 2004). Ferguson’s work models critical cultural studies at its finest. It is astute in mapping changing technologies of capture, while constantly honoring insurgent imagination and radical movements that cannot be contained.

Check the Episode Out

Special thanks to Aliyah Harris for audio editing and to Stephen Brookfield for providing the outro music.

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