Hart

Hart, Joseph. "Protest Is Deal. Long Live Protest." Utne Reader (May-June 2007): 38-40.

Hart suggests that the contemporary anti-war movement fails to affect much change and gain wider coverage because the movement uses the same tired strategies (i.e., non-violent street protests) that have been dominant for four decades. One critic quoted in the series' centerpiece calls these techniques "political exhibitionism" (39), referencing the fetishizing of the symbolic. The piece also charges that for many activists, this performance has become an end in and of itself. Hart argues that to get mass attention, the peace movement needs to engage the public in ways that are creative, dynamic, and interactive.

Some thoughts: This is what I'm talking about regarding affective dimensions of faculty-student relationships in service learning. Many faculty seem to be tied to the exhibiontism of activism and regret that students aren't tied to the same modes of social change. Faculty may feel nostalgia or other affective connections to activist modes. The problem arises when the ASL literature frames students as passive or apolitical. Maybe they just have a different set of affective connections (one tied to volunteerism, perhaps, or maybe too Wingspread's notion of "service politics").