Radical vulnerability

Abstract

The co-constitutive concepts of radical vulnerability, situated solidarities, and hungry translations are rooted in evolving journeys of saathis of Sangtin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan or SKMS, a movement of 8000 small kisans and mazdoors in Sitapur District of Uttar Pradesh in India that emerged from the battles summarised in Playing with Fire and Muddying the Waters. Radical vulnerability seeks to reimagine the temporalities and meanings of knowledge-making partnerships by surrendering to a politics of co-travelling and co-authorship, politics that are accompanied by difficult refusals. A relationality embedded in radical vulnerability strives to internalise that our self is intensely co-constituted and entangled with the other. The labour and poetics of forging togetherness across difference through radical vulnerability, situated solidarities, and hungry translation can only realise their transformative potential as politics without guarantees.