I am visiting Sudbury, Ontario, at the moment. I lived here for about a decade, and moved away two and not-quite-a-half years ago. This is my first visit back in more than a year. As such, my mind is turning to questions of sameness and difference and to cold, dangerous
Continue readingAuthor: Scott Neigh
A Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land: New year, new writing practice
It’s an arbitrary division, but even so, like many other people, as one year draws to a close and another begins, I like to spend a bit of time in focused reflection. I think back over what I did, what I accomplished, what went well, what went poorly in the
Continue readingA Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land: All of my 2017 book reviews!
In the spirit of looking back on the year that was, this post brings together all of the full book reviews I did in 2017. All are nonfiction books about the social world. Check ’em out, lefty book nerds! Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality
Continue readingA Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land: Review: Policing Black Lives
[Robyn Maynard. Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. Halifax NS and Winnipeg MB: Fernwood Publishing, 2017.] I commented in some social media context or other before I had read this book that I thought it would likely be one of the most important books
Continue readingA Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land: Review: From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation
[Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. Chicago IL: Haymarket Books, 2016.] If you are on the left, you have probably encountered some version of what has become a pretty standard account of the history between the end of the Second World War and the present. It follows the social
Continue readingA Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land: Thinking about how cis men can and should be speaking publically about sexual violence
I’ve been thinking a lot in the last month about how cisgender men can and should be speaking publically about sexual violence and gender oppression. I’ve been thinking about this for some obvious reasons and some less obvious reasons. The obvious ones should be – well, obvious. In the last
Continue readingA Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land: Work-in-Progress #1: An overview of my current projects
So I recently realized that I’m a bit bored with the big projects that take up most of my work time. Not wavering in my commitment to them…just a little bored. Now, I already feel that I don’t have enough time to do the things that I need to do,
Continue readingA Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land: Reading *The Lorax* to Enbridge! (And opposing the Line 10 tar sands pipeline expansion!)
My first effort at making a video that’s more than just linear editing of a talking head. It’s a little rough, perhaps, but it’s a chance to see some of an action that took place in Hamilton, Ontario earlier today in opposition to Enbridge’s Line 10 tar sands pipeline expansion
Continue readingA Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land: Review: In the Wake
[Christina Sharpe. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Durham NC and London UK: Duke University Press, 2016.] This book develops ways of exploring and describing the relations that constitute Black diasporic life. As I understand it – and I’m sure I’m missing lots – it begins from a recognition
Continue readingA Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land: A few thoughts about the NDP leadership race…
A few thoughts about the NDP leadership race… …from a Twitter thread I wrote earlier this evening, in the unlikely event that anyone is interested in what I have to say. First, some context to position myself: I am not and have never been a member of the NDP, nor
Continue readingA Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land: Review: Living a Feminist Life
[Sara Ahmed. Living a Feminist Life. Durham NC and London UK: Duke University Press, 2017.] Living a Feminist Life is the latest book from UK-based feminist philosopher Sara Ahmed. I’ve read a number of her other books and find her ideas to be really useful, and I was keen to
Continue readingA Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land: Review: What Love Is
[Carrie Jenkins. What Love Is: And What it Could Be. New York: Basic Books, 2017.] A philosophical examination of romantic love aimed at a lay audience. Some good stuff, but I didin’t like it as much as I’d hoped. It takes a critical, feminist, queer, non-monogamy-friendly approach, all of which
Continue readingA Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land: Losing people to the right, emotion, and movement building
I’ve been thinking, lately, about the transition that some people go through from having left politics to having not-left politics. It’s not that it happens all that often, in my experience, but it is something that I’ve seen come up more in the last little while as a rhetorical device
Continue readingA Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land: Less outrage, more action
I’m not one for shying away from thinking or talking or writing about the bad things in the world, but I have really been struck in the last few days by both the seduction and the limits of outrage as a primary mode of engaging the world. Mind you, we
Continue readingA Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land: Review: Dancing on our Turtle’s Back
[Leanne Simpson. Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence. Winnipeg MB: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2011.] This is a book from a few years ago by renowned Nishnaabeg author, scholar, and activist Leanne Simpson. It is a book about Indigenous resurgence through learning from,
Continue readingA Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land: Review: Revolution at Point Zero
[Silvia Federici. Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle. Oakland CA: PM Press, 2012.] Silvia Federici’s Caliban and the Witch — a feminist reexamination of the origins of capitalism — was, for me, a mind-blowing and paradigm-shifting book. While her essays collected in Revolution at Point Zero didn’t
Continue readingA Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land: Review: Hegemony How-To
[Jonathan Matthew Smucker. Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals. Chico CA: AK Press, 2017.] We need more spaces and more opportunities to think through past, present, and future choices that we face in our movements and communities-in-struggle; this book is an effort to catalyze such things, so I’m glad to
Continue readingA Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land: Review: Direct Action
The following review was done for the April 27, 2017 edition of GET LIT, a bookish show that broadcasts on 93.3 FM CFMU. Check out both the written and audio versions below. [L.A. Kauffman. Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism. London UK and New York NY: Verso,
Continue readingA Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land: Review: Brilliant Imperfection
[Eli Clare. Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling With Cure. Durham NC and London UK: Duke University Press, 2017.] I can think of few writers whose work better exemplifies radical, deeply thoughtful, passionate, nuanced, and incredibly readable engagement with the social world and its injustices than Eli Clare. Brilliant Imperfection, as its subtitle
Continue readingA Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land: Writing, "okayness," and the limits of learning by listening
Okayness is a sedative. Okayness makes your lids drowsy, your thoughts slow down, your focus turn intwards. Okayness is an outrage. It shouldn’t be — it should be normal, universal, an inheritance that comes with being born. But that isn’t the world we live in. Okayness is an irritant. I’m
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