Theorizing the Field, Fielding the Theory: Narrating Politics in Strait Times

Abstract

This article speaks to three distinct—but related—sites of encounter with the political: The first site concerns the field research with feminist academics that has spanned to more than four years, which I conducted in different countries. It is still in the making. The second site relates to contemporary political theory, and the lack of attention to theorizing politics in crisis times and/or regime transitions, displayed either by the rush to model the existing government here-and-now or by sheer silence, putting at risk the capacity to "remember and communicate the political experience" (Wiessberg, 1997, p. 21). The third site is about bringing in micro- politics of everyday life into political theory. In this manuscript, I try to point at a means of doing so—through everyday conversation. I consider these sites as signifying the loss of meaning in the political (both in terms of political practices and reading these practices) in times of crisis, accompanying the increase in the frequency and degree of violence in institutional politics, and in everyday social interactions.² Here, I try to explore the possibilities for a politically engaged theorizing that prioritizes (historical) meaning over (speedy and assembly-line) model- making in explaining the political here-and-now. In so doing, I refer to bringing in everyday politics as storied in the accounts of citizens-as-actors. I argue that political theory offers the medium for turning the stories of political actors into narrations for shedding light on the structure that ties seemingly incidental, and thus divided moments in transition. My argument is that in contemporary versions of crisis—the crisis of neoliberal capitalism—everyday life offers one a space to connect her/his concerns with the politics of theorizing and the theoretical-as-embedded in the political experience.