Akwugo Emejulu on How We Talk About Goodness
We chat about organising, social movements and the key differences between being an ally and a comrade.
Here’s a chat I had with Akwugo Emejulu, professor at the University of Warwick and writer of a number of things I love - including the excellent Fugitive Feminism. With a strong background in both academia and community organising, Akwugo has a fascinating perspective on social movements and organising. It was a real honour to chat to her for this.
Thanks everyone for the boost at the start of the year, it’s been so encouraging to see more folk reading and sharing Everything Mixtape.
How has moving to Scotland impacted your thinking and writing?
I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that before. To come to Scotland and see at that time [early 2000s] a bunch of problems of course, but at least a well-functioning welfare state, and to see what was possible with a safety net… That meant that in the first part of my writing and thinking I was really concerned about the politics of welfare. How did we come to this consensus about taxing and spending? This social democratic idea of a country and what that means in terms of citizens' relationships to each other, but also relationships to strangers.
You worked with trade unions back in Texas, right? What was it like to do that kind of job in an environment that is so hostile to it?
I worked for the Texas State Employees Union, which was effectively a public sector workers union, like UNISON. But of course in Texas and a bunch of Southern States, they call it a ‘right to work’ state which means that it’s illegal to go on strike. You can be hired and fired at will. To be a union organiser before it was trendy… we think about the Amazon Union, the Starbucks Union and you’re like ‘Yes! This is Incredible!’. But I remember when my colleagues and I would go into a bar and we’d get chatting to folks [telling them] we’re union organisers, they would laugh in your face. It felt hostile and futile, but it was the most important political education I had.
“Comradeship is trying to distribute power throughout the collective, it’s not saying ‘tell me what to do’, it’s just grabbing a broom.”
I love this quote from your book Fugitive Feminism: “Community is the space where we can experiment with our social relations to develop relationships based on love and trust, rather than competition and exclusion”. I find sometimes, even in ‘progressive’ discourse, there can be a culture of self righteousness and exclusion. Maybe it’s a pull to individualism? Here you talk about community as a risk, a way that we become vulnerable with each other.
It’s certainly the case that micro-celebrity in activism is an ongoing pernicious problem. But it’s also kinda just the way it is, that is the nature of leadership. If you find someone who is charismatic and articulate, quick on their toes, they’re invariably pushed to the front. Oftentimes that is really good because you can rally people, you can offer hope. But more often than not that goes to people’s heads and they start to identify themselves as the key actor in these things. It’s the lure of status. But I don’t think that’s even the same as this ideological purity. Sometimes that is just flexing for social media - which has not helped either of these dynamics. Activism is this really unsexy, boring, grinding work, riddled with compromise - which it should be, frankly, if we’re serious about consensus. The crisis that we’re in… I think people sometimes want the reassurance of purity, but that gets in the way of community.
And it gets in the way of creating that vulnerable space…
But that’s not appropriate to every space. There are some spaces you’re there just to get the job done. You’re not there to emote. You’re not there to make friends. You’re not there to be vulnerable. That’s why activism is really complicated, you have to start learning where are the spaces where you can be open, vulnerable and having deep conversations and where are the spaces where you’re like ‘no, fuck that, let’s get the job done’. It’s super complicated.
You also write about care in the book and how it’s not just this simple force for good. Could you expand a little bit on what you mean when you talk about this more negative side of our care discourse?
Oftentimes, especially now that ‘care’ is really trendy, it’s done in this self-aggrandising way. You’re in this relationship with someone expecting thanks, praise, expecting something else. The situation is different for every activist group, but there’s something here about an assumption that care is like a band-aid, the thing that solves everything, but it doesn’t. It’s a political relationship, just like vulnerability, that is not appropriate in all situations. People have read one chapter of bell hooks’ All About Love but not grappled with the key thesis. It sounds great but what’s actually involved in doing this is a completely different way of thinking about other people and yourself.
Around Brexit you wrote this article for Verso that concluded with “I’m not looking for allies, I want collective action”. The word ‘ally’ has taken a bit of a beating in the last few years, what do you make of it today?
What a mess. It’s now become almost toxic, right? Part of the problem with the concept of ally, is that an ally is not someone who is identifying with the struggle. They identify with the support role in the background but not in it with you shoulder to shoulder. It’s an inferior way of thinking about solidarity. When we think about solidarity we’re thinking about folks who identify an injustice and take action regardless whether it directly affects them: ‘This is wrong, I may not be Black, or Trans, or Palestinian, but I’ve been mobilised to action’. Being an ally you’re saying ‘How awful, what can I do to support you/the individual in your struggles?’. You’re differently positioned. You don’t have skin in the game. Some of the research that I do… a lot of women of colour activists talk about their frustrations with mostly white women in the background who want to be allies. They present themselves with ‘just tell me what to do and I’ll do it’. Don’t you see you’ve just given me more work to do? When you think about allyship, the focus is still always on the person with the most power. Comradeship is trying to distribute that power throughout the collective, it’s not saying ‘tell me what to do’, it’s just grabbing a broom.
Right. It all ends up being some version of the instagram tiles in 2020.
At the time we all said it was bullshit and we’ve been vindicated because we’ve all gone back to normal as if these things are still not happening. I’m writing this paper about the politics of goodness amongst white activists. There’s a commitment to being ‘a good person’ and that needs to be defended more than anything. If you’re concerned about yourself, about being perceived as good, not about making a difference, then the way you move through space is very interesting.
Can’t overstate how much it feels like things have gone back to ‘normal’. That was a wild time, I’m always thinking about the photo of Keir Starmer taking a knee…
Did he take a knee? How embarrassing… [laughs] My favourite thing was [that photo of] Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. It’s so embarrassing. No one asked for this. People are caught up in the moment. There’s the initial outrage but you don’t want to have your position in any way threatened or diminished.
How does change happen?
Slowly and painfully. There’s this slow push and then the wall gives.
If I died today, left this newsletter to you in my inheritance and you had to interview one last person, who would you interview?
I’d like to interview Ryusuke Hamaguchi, director of Drive My Car (2021). I think that’s now, hands down, my favourite film. Every time I watch it’s a spiritual experience.
What’s been inspiring you?
We’ll do high and low… We’re at a new golden age of anime. There’s a new series called Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. It’s a contemplation about life, death and time. It is so good… I can’t believe what I’m watching. In terms of film, I finally got to watch Burning (2018).
I love Burning.
What a film. It’s an amazing exploration of all these different issues.