The Other Citizen - by Brandon LaBelle (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Volume two in Errant Bodies' new series on transcultural poetics: struggles and utopian desires of contemporary life

The Other Citizen tracks the hopes and losses, struggles and utopian desires of what the author terms "the floating subjects" of contemporary life. Drawing upon traditions of socially engaged poetics, the work takes aim at the heart of contemporary crisis and exclusionary politics, mobilizing instead the creative solidarities and pirate imaginaries spanning the globe. Through ten acts we are led into narratives of friendship and survival, threadbare endurance and tender resistance.
From lost teenagers struggling in the American maze of neoliberal privatization to secret gatherings of artistic bandits occupying buildings in Madrid to those caught in between the borders of nation-states, these emerge as frontiers of invention that, when stitched together, outline the force of an anarchic citizenry. The Other Citizen is a challenging and moving call for exiting the new norm of crisis.