Whilst well-established within Indigenous, disability and trans studies, rage as a methodology of affect has yet to emerge into widespread use within mainstream archaeology. This is to the detriment of our discipline. As archaeology increasingly comprehends its political implications and endeavours to establish itself as a progressive field by challenging the climate crisis, colonialism, discrimination and more, it must adopt a methodology that strives to engender change through anger, activism and action. Seldom has progress been won without fighting for it. Furthermore, we must question if, as a social discipline, we can genuinely produce co-created and meaningful work without feeling the same outrage as the communities we work with and for.
Archaeologists often perceive rage as a last resort; where you end up when all traditional academic approaches to a problem have failed. However, through its ability to make individuals think from the position of disenfranchised or otherwise overlooked communities, rather than simply in sympathy with them, scholars of rage/outrage demonstrate why it must be integrated into praxis from the start (e.g.; Stiker, 1997; Stryker, 1994; Weismantel, 2013). This might, and often does, include making those in positions of power and/or privilege uncomfortable by equalising the epistemological playing field through championing embodied knowledge and challenging entrenched power dynamics.
We are looking for contributions that showcase how outrage functions as an affective method within any and all archaeological frameworks, be these gender, disability, climate, enabled, Indigenous or any other archaeologies. Submissions that look to evolve activist and transformative archaeologies using rage/outrage and those that discuss integrating this methodology “at the trowel’s edge” are especially encouraged.
9:10am | Disability Activism in an Interdisciplinary Archaeology: Experiences of ableism and methods of counteracting it via Critical Disability Studies | Alexandra F Morris & Hannah Vogel
9:30am | Outrage, Survivors, and Politicising Archaeologies of Carceral Sites | Elias Michaut
9:50am | Break |
10:00am | Stirring the Pottery: Intentional and Accidental Outrage as a Method of Digital Public Archaeology. | Steph Black
10:20am | Defaultism in Landscape Archaeology. | David Stapley
11:00am | F*ck Your Civility, I Want Change! On Subversive Anger as an Asian American Archaeologist. | Alex Fitzpatrick
11:00am | Benign Ignorance and Unintended Consequences - or Why you Shouldn't Make an Activist Rage. | Ashley Fisher
11:20am | Turning Alienation into Action: Attempting to build a Disability Archaeology by and for Disabled People | Anna Freed
12:10pm | No, But My Mates Do: Considering the Necessity of Communities of Care to Actualise Anger-driven Activism | Yvonne O'Dell, Brodhie Molloy and Andy Rogers
12:30pm | Break |
12:40pm | Discussion |
Full paper abstracts available here: https://tag2024.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/tag-2024-session-abstracts-1.pdf
