Bodies in Action: Corporeal Enactments of Political Activism in the Czech Climate Movement
Bd.19,Nr.1(2022)
Climate Action: Transforming Infrastructure, Cultivating Attentiveness, Practicing Solidarity
In recent years we have seen the rise of climate activism in Czech Republic. In contrast with transactional activism based predominantly on small, advocacy and professionalized NGOs which use lobbying as their main repertoire of action supported by expert knowledge, this activism takes shape as embodied practices of mass civil disobedience such as occupying fossil fuel infrastructures during climate camps. The urgency of the climate crisis has brought the body and emotions back into politics. Based on qualitative, primarily ethnographic research of Czech climate activism, the article examines the role of the body in these new tactics. Drawing on conceptions of emotion and affect in social movements, it shows the shifts in the modes of activism and it addresses the questions of how bodies in action change the understanding of activism and politics, and help to create new forms of solidarity. Specifically, the article develops the concept of affinity as a way of organizing contemporary climate activism that can help explain the tension that activists feel between what is and what could be.
environmental activism, body, emotions, direct action, climate justice, prefigurative politics, affinity
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