Co-Motion: Re-Thinking Power, Subjects, and Feminist and Queer Alliances

Paola Bacchetta

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Co-Motion

Re-Thinking Power, Subjects, and Feminist and Queer Alliances

Paola Bacchetta

Language: English

Published/Copyright: 2026

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About this book

In Co-Motion, theorist Paola Bacchetta proposes a new lexicon for analyzing power, subjects and alliances. Employing what she calls ‘theory-assemblages’ to describe how diverse theoretical and political approaches inspire movements and produce different kinds of alliances, Bacchetta engages the inseparability of power relations—such as colonialism, capitalism, racism, caste, misogyny, and speciesism—and how their combinations, operability, and the analyses they require, shift in different contexts and lives of subjects. Focusing on France, India, Italy, and the US from the 1970s to the present, Co-Motion addresses a wide activist, artivist, and social movement archive— group statements, banners, pamphlets, graffiti, posters, poetry, sit-ins, films, art exhibits—to think and feel with the many ways that people, historically and today, come together to act. Through her expansive engagement with varied bodies of scholarship, sites of analysis, and kinds of reading, Bacchetta offers new approaches to analyze, confront, and transforming power, and to enact freedom.

Reviews

“In this stunningly original and thoroughly provocative book, Paola Bacchetta proposes a new critical vocabulary for grasping alliances, solidarities, and the analytics of power. Co-Motion is an impressively thorough and synthetic survey of contemporary feminist and queer theories for thinking about social change and revolution beyond the borders that now restrict us—and toward a planetary scale.”
-- Mimi Thi Nguyen, author of The Promise of Beauty

“Bacchetta continues to be one of the most important intellectuals of this generation and this book demonstrates exactly why that is the case. Co-Motion creates a compelling and dense lexicon for understanding the present conditions and functionality of power within what she calls situated planetarities. As opposed to the global, a planetary approach is a powerful corrective to much contemporary scholarship on the global. It’s digestible and yet profoundly comprehensive.”
-- Karma R. Chavez, author of The Borders of AIDS: Race, Quarantine, and Resistance

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
INTRODUCTION Openings Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	1
1 Co-Motion at Present Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	33
2 Imaginings Otherwise Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	70
3 Co-Formations, Co-Productions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	103
4 Situated Planetarities Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	139
5 Other Sensings in Praxes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	175
Appendix A “Our Queer Pride Is Anti-Racist” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	217
Appendix B Pride for Whom? Pride for What? The Opportunism of Alliances and Visibility Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	219
Appendix C Racialized Queers and Trans Against Homonationalism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	223
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	225
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	231
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	265

Publishing information

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

eBook published on:

November 28, 2025

eBook ISBN:

9781478061724

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478061724

eBook ISBN: 9781478061724

Audience(s) for this book

For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research

Co-Motion

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About this book

Reviews

Topics

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