Agata Lisiak’s research while affiliated with Bard College and other places

In this article, the author proposes thinking of Rosa Luxemburg’s herbarium as a manifestation of plant companionship, a term she uses to describe the practice of noticing plant life and acknowledging it for what it is, caring for and about it, protecting and defending it, and remaining humbly open to what we do not (yet) know about it. She traces an ecofeminist genealogy of plant companionship by gleaning connections between Luxemburg’s political ecology and the work of contemporary women artists who engage with the politics of human relationships with plants – Milena Bonilla, Marwa Arsanios and Jumana Manna – as well as John Berger’s writings and drawings that highlight the epistemic and ontological openness that is required of humans in life-affirming engagements with the nonhuman. Relationally thinking about struggles from different geographies and temporalities, the author believes, can draw together the two most pressing causes of our time – human liberation and earth liberation.

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) is commonly known as a political thinker, economist, and revolutionary socialist. A person of versatile interests and skills, she was certainly a widely admired public speaker, journalist, publisher, teacher, translator, editor, and party leader, as well as an amateur botanist, an occasional painter, and–particularly in her final years–an avid birdwatcher. What also powerfully comes through in her writing (especially her letters), but has received little attention to date, is that she had the mind and pen of an urban ethnographer. In her thick, vivid accounts of urban sights and sounds, Luxemburg generously tapped into her senses and emotions, in the process revealing how affect shapes urban experiences and imaginaries. Focusing on practices and politics of maintenance and care, this paper offers an analysis of Luxemburg’s multisensory descriptions of her urban surroundings and ‘the unavoidable challenge of negotiating a here-and-now’ that Doreen Massey theorized as throwntogetherness. Taking seriously Luxemburg’s observations in and about the city recorded in her letters and botanical notebooks reveals the small acts of commonplace theorizing that in academia are still too rarely recognized for what they are.

In this article, we argue that in the context of the rise of nationalism and increasing inequalities across European metropolises, developing an attentiveness to the sounds of the city can be utilized to unpack individual and collective claims to entitlement and belonging. Focussing on London and Berlin, we argue that thinking through two aspects of sonic registers – languages and non-verbal sounds – together can enrich understandings of cities where questions of living with difference have become politicized and fiercely charged. We draw on and further develop the concept of xenoglossophobia – the fear of foreign languages – to become inclusive of non-verbal sounds as well. Using the concept of xenophonophobia – the fear of all foreign sounds, including, but not limited to, foreign languages – we begin the process of naming racism beyond words in an attempt to find new ways to explore how the struggle for belonging is unfolding within the city. A consideration of the meanings given to sounds can offer a way to understand how boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ are being drawn in European capital cities like Berlin and London.

Polityczny potencjał siły dziewczyńskości nie tkwi w sile jednostki, ale w dostrzeżeniu wspólności i wielości dziewczyńskich doświadczeń. Odrzucenie postawy heroicznej i wyjście poza indywidualistyczny paradygmat girl power pozwalają na uwidocznienie różnych, nierzadko sprzecznych ze sobą narracji i reprezentacji składających się na współczesne dziewczyństwo, co z kolei pozwala nie tylko na identyfikację kompleksowych mechanizmów wykluczenia, ale też wytworzenie inkluzywnych taktyk i strategii oporu wobec nich. W oparciu o literaturę feministyczną oraz przykłady dziewczyńskiego oporu z kultury popularnej staram się pokazać, w jaki sposób dziewczyny, dokonując interwencji w miejscach zakodowanych jako męskie, łamią kody kulturowe, płciowe, rasowe i klasowe, stawiają opór, przechwytują narracje o sobie samych i egzekwują swoje prawo do miasta. Choć niektóre z omawianych przeze mnie gestów, taktyk i strategii mogą się wydawać zbyt łagodne, żeby mieć siłę polityczną, proponuję, że właśnie tym niepozornym formom wyrażania oporu warto się bliżej przyjrzeć, stosując w ich analizie kategorię kontrpubliczności i upłciowionego prawa do miasta.

This collaborative essay applies experimental walking and writing methods to address the experience of modernity in contemporary Berlin. Engaging critically with Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts Into Air and using Franz Hessel's Walking in Berlin as our guide, we explore the city's scenes and sounds. Our reflections—some captured through photography, some expressed in prose—give way to essential questions: How does walking help us interrogate the experience of modernity? Can it help us understand what it means for Berlin (or any other city) to be “a city coming into being”? How do we make it come into being? Even when walking the same route, each person is bound to experience the city differently, and so we find it makes little sense to try to impose a single reading of contemporary Berlin. We invite the reader to walk through the city with us, but we do not insist on holding hands. Our text quite literally reflects various points of view on the city and should be considered a series of occurrences, reflections, and impressions that work both in contrast and concert. Walking a city produces countless readings, and our text aims to reflect that multiplicity: the reader may read it straight through, randomly, or hopscotch-style. If parts of the essay appear to be “melting into air,” this elusiveness reflects the experience of modernity which Berman wrote about and which we tried to also capture here. We hope that the format—collaborative, experimental, engaged, and open—will yield new reflections on urban modernities and open up new perspectives on urban theory and methods. © 2019