How can the body which is constantly changing inspire understanding about life and about knowledge? I am inspired by memories of seeing and participating in dance that felt inclusive. These memories remind me that dance can be a gift, to both the participant and the observer, of a sense of freedom, agency and collective. The left wing modern dance movement in New York, toyi-toyi from the South African anti-apartheid movement, and radical cheerleading at a protest of the Free Trade Area of the Americas are all examples of this. I want to draw from this understanding of dance in order to allow for feelings of abundance, empowerment and agency in my writing about the dancing body and hope. I am filled with a sense of the possibilities for history and memory in subverting hegemony through the dancing body. I can see how history or memory also embodies the on-going creation of the landscapes of the present. It is not just the constructed narratives that those with the power to do so produce about themselves and others' pasts. I want to bring some of life's patchiness into my own attempt to tell a story based on a different writing structure so that I might play with structure in a way that breaks with modern ideas of progress and knowledge production. The story itself has something to do with the body, memory and dance. Part of my goal is to adopt a writing style that mimics this story.
Militant around the Clock? Left-Wing Youth Politics, Leisure, and Sexuality in Post-Dictatorship Greece, 1974–1981. By Nikolaos Papadogiannis . Protest, Culture and Society. New York: Berghahn Books, 2015. x, 329 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Tables. $110.00, hard bound.