There is always already politics...

The landscape in Breukelen might look nice and innocent.



But. There is always already politics.



And this is what we talked about during the last walking seminar:



There is always already politics. So much of it and in so many versions.

State politics. Policy. Party politics. Intellectual politics. Politics embedded in the questions asked, the money flowing, the passions fostered, the ways in which some things are framed as ‘problems’, the ways in which some things (and not others) are performed as ‘real’.

And then there is research. Let’s say: yours.

Where is it situated, against which kinds of practices that might be called ‘political’? Where do you want it to move? What do you want to move with it? What are the twisty and thorny roads going here and there – that might take you in ‘bad’ directions?

What can you do, practically, to make your work stand out more as ‘political’ or rather less; what to make it be more or less ‘political’; and in relation to which kind of ‘politics’? (Maybe the answer differ for different force fields.)

How do you avoid over- and underpolitisation?

Where does your work risks to be overheated or rather fall flat? Where does it risk to make itself too loud or rather irrelevant? What would you hope to achieve? What is your concern?