In Response to the Activist Affect of “Risky Business,Uncertain Futures . . .”: (Special Issue)

Abstract

The respondent to the 2025 Autoethnography Special Interest Group (SIG) session at International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI), offers brief commentary on the potency of the panel. At the same time, he signals the reader to a more extended response/reaction to the panel published in the International Review of Qualitative Inquiry immediately after the performance panel. The author uses the constructs of “activist affect” and “activist effects” as meaningful tools to reinforce the importance of the panel (and panelist) to inspire critical response through qualitative inquiry as activism.

When Stacy Holman Jones and Harris (2021) introduced and extended the notion of “activist affect,” for me, they were talking about the invocation of a shared emotional response that is present within collective activism. When a group of critically committed people stand-up and speak out on issues that matter to both a specific population, and for the greater good of our shared communities and collective consciousness. Whether on the streets of political marches or in the critical and articulate arena of conference gatherings, the tactics are the same—focused attention on the issues that matter with strategies of engagement that make a meaningful impact on our understanding—invoking the fierce urgency of now. A phrase attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1963) in his march on Washington speech; the phrase calls for immediate and vigorous action against social and economic injustices, emphasizing that there is no time for complacency. The activist affect is a reference both to an imagined and measured emotional response, collectively construed and activated towards making a meaningful impact for social justice. It is both a call to arms and a responded charge to enact the possibilities of change (Harris & Holman Jones, 2019; Holman Jones & Harris, 2021).

This is what I felt and experienced in the 2025 Autoethnography Special Interest Group (SIG)—“Risky Business, Uncertain Futures . . . and (How) the Work Continues,” at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. With affect theory, not reduced to just emotional response; though such response stirs the spirit, the mind, and the body to action; but the ways in which critical affect becomes calculated display of our humanness to be mindful of the conditions under which we all labor; across borders and boundaries of assumed difference and thus impacting social inter/actions. Ideally, for me, with the intentionality of awakening the impulse to act on/for constructive change and productive human sociality (Schaefer, 2019).

I had the pleasure of being a live respondent to the panel that was structured around three informing themes: “Speaking Through a Broken Heart”, “Advocacy and Action” and “Worldmaking/World(re)making.” The presenters Christopher Poulos, Kimberlee Perez, Jayna Tavarez and Wilson Kwamogi Okello spoke, nay performed with such passion in response to the themes that the figurative walls of our enclosed mediated zoom rooms vibrated with the energy and the urgency of now. Each presenter spoke to the theme in critical and imaginative ways that forced those in attendance, and especially me—to be responsive to the call, not just to their words and the virtuosity of their performances. But to respond to their charge: to excite and force us to confront the risky business, uncertain futures . . . and (how) the work continues’ in qualitative inquiry in the times in which we are living:

Times in which the borders and boundaries of our world are closing in and threatening our joint humanity.

Times in which environmental issues threaten our safety—differentially and indifferently relative to place, space, and the privilege of positionality.

Times in which tyrannical leaders are changing the very notion of what it means to be human and issues of belongingness with hierarchies of value in points of origin.

Times in which the increased importance of qualitative inquiry demands that we call to attention, to attend to the importance of critically analyzing the human experience with exacting strategies of action. Thus, putting the affective response to work in critical activism.

Times in which notions of communication, collaboration, coordination, and cooperation are no longer just tenets for community building—they are necessities to build and maintain our human ecosystem, for our very survival.

Times in which advocacy and activism are not only options but necessities.

Times in which world making and world remaking must be essential everyday actions in which we tell and retell our stories to make real the world in which we want to live-in; to identify and maintain habitable spaces for all people to live in their/our own dense particularities and what conjoins our humanity across differences (Mohanty, 1989).

In the panel I was a respondent to live performance, without access to the formal papers or scripts that guided the presentations. But I was moved. Moved by and within the activist affect; of the call and response to a brilliantly constructed panel. So moved, that immediately after the panel I began to write. Write as one of the tools of my scholarly activism. Write with the veracity and voracity of the presenters to make a difference; to put the word out; to make a difference to act upon the nature of their vast contributions. Thus, enacting the activist effect—that motivating impulse as a response to their activism with a purpose. A measurable and performative act—a thing done, in response to a call; a response that says: I was moved towards action; to externalize the emotional response to something real and make it visible and tangible. A performative act, in words and deed (Austin, 1962). Hence, I immediately published the essay entitled “Responding to the Panel ‘Risky Business, Uncertain Futures . . . and (how) the Work Continues’” (Alexander, 2025). In the piece I both acknowledge and partner with the presenters to extend the activist affect of their efforts in a dialogical exigency of publication; but more importantly, making more public their contributions—then signaling a broader audience to their performative texts that hopefully you are reading now; dynamizing the importance of their work to inspire.

“The theme of the Autoethnography Small Interest Group demanded our attention to the risky business to the disregard of human sociality, our uncertain futures under government leadership run-amuck, and how our work as qualitative researchers must continue to matter against totalitarian regimes” (p. 10). The extended introduction by the conveners; Elissa Foster, Dominique C. Hill and Durell M. Callier; along with additional voices and contributions to this Special Issue by Jack Tan, David Carless & Kitrina Douglas, and Donna F. Henson—bring an added vibrancy to the importance of these issues in the fierce urgency of now. I encourage you to read these performative essays with the acuity of their engagement and be inspired to act, now!