Stephen Duncombe – författare

This elegantly written and charmingly illustrated book offers a series of reflections on the way lessons learned from angling can be applied to political activism and vice versa. Patience, preparation and precision are needed both to catch fish and build a movement.

An avid fisherman in his youth, Steve Duncombe put down his rod nearly forty years ago, picking up, instead, a bullhorn and a placard to begin organizing community groups, mobilizing marches, staging direct actions, walking picket lines, and being arrested for civil disobedience more times than he can remember. Over the past decade, he has traveled the globe training activists to think more like artists and artists to think more like activists.

Looking for a physical retreat and mental break during the pandemic of 2020 Duncombe took up fishing again. After so many decades away from sport, he had to re-teach himself how to fish and approached the practice with what Zen masters call Beginner’s Mind. With no recent experience to fall back on, every fish successfully caught or line hopelessly snarled provided a clear lesson. With hours spent doing little more than casting and retrieving — actually catching fish being a fraction of the time spent fishing — he had plenty of time to think about the lessons he was learning. One of the things he thought a lot about was activism. Fishing, he discovered, has a lot to teach about the art of activism.

The Activist Angler brings together these lessons in an engaging journey from the street to the beach and back. The format is simple: one refection on fishing followed by another on what might be learned and applied to activism with each accompanied by an illustration. Topics range from telling fish stories and the trap of activist nostalgia, to the impossibility of thinking like a fish yet the necessity of understanding one’s audience, with detours through meditations on self-care, catch-and-release, and taking responsibility for the human cost of one’s political actions.

A radical anthology shaking up the canon by bringing together perspectives on art and activism across eras and cultures.

Thinkers, activists, and artists have long grappled with definitions of art, the role of activism, and the relationship between the two—answers that shift across historical and cultural frameworks. This anthology challenges and expands the canon by deliberately juxtaposing radically different conceptions of art and activism, bringing together thinkers from different eras, cultures, and geographies.

Rather than including case studies or manifestos, the texts are organized thematically: Art Unsettles: Social Systems and Critique; Art Reveals: Making the Invisible Visible; Art Resists: Everyday Interventions; Art Acts: Activism as Art; Art (Re)Orders: Making Sense of the World; and Art Imagines: Envisioning New Worlds.

Through this thematic structure, the anthology seeks to expand and decenter traditional canons. Each thematic section opens with a brief essay by the editors framing the central conceptual debates, inviting readers to engage with the tensions and possibilities at the intersection of art and politics. Among the writers included are: Gloria Anzaldúa, John Berger, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Octavia Butler, John Dewey, W.E.B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Safdar Hashmi, bell hooks, Juan López Intzín, Audre Lorde, Herbert Marcuse, Jacques Rancière, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.