How can we go beyond self-reflexivity in our research and deal with our inability to directly impact the living conditions of our interlocutors? Our interlocutors often request our assistance with daily tasks and have their own agendas regarding collaboration. But in many cases, they may not want us to intervene in any public way. Therefore, we must not enforce our agendas of “social justice” and “activism,” assuming that the project could transform their situation. Kazubowski-Houston explains how the layer of fiction in her work allows Romani women to share issues of concern in a carefully edited, curated, and anonymized way due to fear of community reprisal. Instead of always approaching activism as a social movement or a protest, we should consider the potential of such improvisatory practices and the subtle, slow ways in which activism plays out in everyday life.

Read insights from the talk here: https://www.urgentemergent.org/talking-uncertainty/kazubowski-houston.

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