Disruption has been critical to the emergence of new subjects and subjectivities. Here you will find documents by subjects who rejected their given roles, descriptions, and functions in order to redefine themselves on new terms.
All
Black
Students
Colonized
Queer
Latino
Indigenous
Women
Workers
Subjects Redefined
All
Pre-Modern
1700-1830s
1840-1945
1946-1989
1990-2010
2011-Present
Weather Underground – Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism (1970)
The accidental explosion of a Greenwich Village townhouse during a bomb-making session in 1970 left the Weather Underground– a radical left organization formed in 1969– distraught. In an attempt to reunify under their…
Resisting Puerto Rican Sterilization
In a newspaper article from the Young Lords in 1970, Iris Morales writes about the genocide committed against Puerto Rican women.
Protest the Infirmary! (Gainesville Women’s Liberation, 1997)
This protest leaflet is from the Gainesville Women’s Liberation movement and is part of a wider effort at the University of Florida to increase women’s sexual autonomy through disrupting the mainstream tactics of the hea…
Sarayaku Court Case(2012)
The indigenous people of Sarayaku were faced with a devastating loss in 1996. The Ecuadorean state gave away a large part of their land to an oil company without consulting the people that were living there. In 2002, thi…
To the Peoples of the World – Zapatistas (2021)
This letter – written on January 1, 2021 – includes a description of what unites the people of the Zapatista movement and agreements to keep the struggle active.
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 by Karl Marx
These manuscripts were complied posthumously after Marx’s death in 1932. They analyze a variety of topics, including (in this excerpt) estranged labor, private property, communism, and the power of money in a bourgeoise…
Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant (2002)
“Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant” is the autobiography of radical feminist Andrea Dworkin. Though Dworkin also wrote short stories and novels, she was best known for her non-fiction feminist writi…
The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968)
This 1968 book by Brazilian author Paulo Friere is considered one of the pillars of the critical pedagogy movement, which aimed to apply critical theory to the study of culture. The methodology in the text aims to empowe…
Press Release from The New School Students for Justice in Palestine
Over the past weeks at various universities across the United States, students have erected encampments to demand action to end Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip. These protests have arisen on the campuses of some of the…
I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities (1985)
In 1985, feminist, civil rights activist, and librarian Audre Lorde published “I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities”. The essay was centered around organizing black women in the fight against patri…
The Palestinian Revolution: The Right to Self-Determination and the Independent State (1977)
“The Palestinian Revolution: The Right to Self-Determination and the Independent State” was a 1977 publication by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The publication was a collection of infromation and…
Covert Sex Discrimination Against Women as Medical Patients (1972)
In this speech originally given to the American Psychological Association, activist Carol Downer described her analysis of the medical field in the United States, and the way that male dominance within the field effectiv…
Art Front Magazine (1937)
The Art Front was a magazine first published by the Artists Union of New York as a response to Nelson Rockefeller’s destruction of a mural by Diego Rivera in 1934. Politically, the Artists Union and the magazine were ali…
bell hooks – Feminism is for Everybody (2000)
bell hooks is a feminist, professor, and activist. In 2000, she published “Feminism is for Everybody”. Key to her politics and feminist philosophy is that the overarching “enemy”/structure to dismantle is the “white supr…
Black Women’s Manifesto (1970)
A Critique of the Miss America Pageant (1968)
The Miss America Pageant Protest marked a turning point for the Women’s Liberation Movement, because the media coverage of the event itself exposed the American public to the existence of the movement. With a focus on th…
What’s Really Happening at Gustafsen Lake and Why (1995)
This piece describes the conflict between sundancers of the Shuswap First Nation and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) during August and September of 1995. Members of the Shuswap Nation were engaging in their annu…
Port Huron Statement (1962)
The Port Huron Statement was published in 1962 at a United Workers Retreat in Port Huron, Michigan. It was the first time Students for a Democratic Society gathered from across the nation, and became the group’s manifest…
Political Prisoners, Prisons, and Black Liberation (May 1971)
In this document, Angela Y. Davis begins with a discussion of unjust laws and black resistance. After historical analysis, Davis begins to discuss the judicial system and the political prisoner. This document ends with a…