Redefining power through Incidental Activism: Recreating the Living Room as a space of Radical Kindness
Author: Lavinia Small
Supervisors: Henk Roodt Steve Henry
30 November 2024
Small, L. (2024). Redefining power through Incidental Activism: Recreating the Living Room as a space of Radical Kindness [Master's thesis, Otago Polytechnic].
Abstract
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines ‘power’ as “the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behaviour of others or the course of events”. That is, ‘power’ in its historically defined capacity, exists as defined by the powerlessness of others (2024). This work is based around the creation of a book full of poems, words, reflections and recipes, as an elastic solution to an inelastic problem (Gay in Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2024 2 ); considering itself to be a work of ‘Incidental Activism’, as the essential response to the non-essential (incidental) consequences that arise from this commonly understood definition of power amongst people.
This work takes a decolonising approach to reframe and consider power as power with and not only power over, creating space for and empowering marginalised peoples and perspectives. Through the use of autoethnography, bricolage, comparative linguistics, context review and both poetry and culinary arts design as forms of artistic research, this work uses food and poetry as interactive, interpretive and deeply emotional entry points to conversations around power. As such it aims to create a space in which we may approach them from a ‘Living Room’ perspective, believing that from there we may approach them with a ‘Radical Kindness’ often lost when these conversations and concepts are referred to as overtly political.
To simplify, as this work is created and shared, and as the reader interacts with and interprets it, we may consider what exactly power is, what it may look like, how it may feel to ourselves and others, and what then, it perhaps could be; how it could be shared. This requires a willingness to reflect and consider, and an understanding that this ‘redefining of power’ may well look like a losing of it to some, so that others may share in it. This, as a deep-rooted, deliberate care, compassion and openness that pushes for social change, is what has been termed ‘Radical Kindness’.
This work began as a chef’s attempt to recreate or rekindle respect for what we eat and the origins of our food, believing that the fostering and nurturing of such respectful relationships may then flow over into our relationships not only with lands and waters, but with other humans. However having been coloured by a background of ongoing and escalating violence and attempts on the rights, autonomy and lives of many historically and currently marginalised groups, this work instead became a desperate attempt to create space for active and productive conversation. As evidenced by conversations that have arisen from this work throughout the process of its creation, this ‘Living Room’ space, as a place of ‘Radical Kindness’, does indeed have potential as a space to ‘redefine power’.
2 Festival of Dangerous Ideas. 2024. “How to Have Dangerous Ideas // Roxane Gay.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o6SDLP4brc.
Keywords
decolonising, activism, culinary arts, poetry, power
Licence
This thesis is not publicly available.
