What if doubt, hesitation and ambivalence weren’t barriers to activism but powerful tools for change?
Challenging the idea that activism is fuelled only by anger or hope, this bold collection explores how activists across anti-racism, climate justice and mental health navigate uncertainty to sustain their work. Blending scholarship with on-the-ground perspectives, this book highlights ambivalence not as a weakness but as a dynamic force.
This is essential reading for anyone engaged in activism or emotional research, redefining what it means to feel and act for justice in a complex world.
Table of Content
Introduction: Ambivalent Activism: Working with Contradiction, Hesitation and Doubt for Social Change
Part 1: Theorising Ambivalence
1. Ambivalence as Misfeeling, Ambivalence as Refusal
2. On (Not) Knowing What Is to Be Done (In 17 Affective Registers)
3. Facing Defeat: Rosa Luxemburg in Dialogue with Prefigurative Politics
4. Orchestrating the Furies: AnzaldúA’s Evolving Conception of Ambivalent Political Struggle
Part 2: Activism as Ambivalent Praxis
5. An Activism of the In-Between
6. Resisting with People I Don’t Like: Exploring the Internal Tensions Among Queer Activists in Lagos, Nigeria
7. Ambivalent Activism: Re-Contextualising Mental Health Politics
8. Ambivalence and Veganism: Rethinking Sentiment in Moral Choices
9. The Embroidery Collective: Embroidering and Reimagining Community in Times of Struggle
10. Ambivalent Emotions Empowering Activism: Learning from Youth Activists in Aotearoa
Part 3: Activism and the Ambivalent Academy
11. Working with Discomfort: Contesting Ambivalence Through Care and Accountability in Edinburgh University’s ‘Skull Room’
12. The Poetry of Ambivalence: A Nudge Towards Tending
13. The Role of ‘Stuckedness’: Ambivalence in Scholar-Activism
Conclusion: Thinking with Pessimism
About the author
Callum Mc Gregor is Lecturer in Education at Moray House School of Education and Sport at the University of Edinburgh.
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