For each episode of 5 Objects, we ask a guest to choose five pieces or items that have influenced their intellectual life and work. These can be books, art, music, poetry, photographs, performance, a person, an event, or an experience. The choices of objects have ranged from books by Edward Said, Steve Biko, and Assata Shakur, music from Notorious BIG, art by Ermias Ekube, the radio, and becoming a refugee after the Somali war. The choices then become the basis of a free-flowing conversation that discusses our guest’s life, their personal, political, and intellectual journeys and histories. For this episode, Suchitra Vijayan talks to Dr. Anand Pandian, a professor of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. This week Suchitra Vijayan spoke to Dr. Anna Feigenbaum.
Anna Feigenbaum, is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Storytelling at Bournemouth University. Her work focuses on communication and social justice. She is a co-author of Protest Camps with Fabian Frenzel and Patrick McCurdy (Zed 2013), author of Tear Gas (Verso 2017), and the forthcoming Data Storytelling Workbook (Routeldge 2020). Her research can be found in a variety of academic journals as well as in The Guardian, The Atlantic, Le Monde, The Financial Times, and Vice among other outlets
I recently read Anna’s, incredible book, “Tear Gas — From the Battlefields of WWI to the Streets of Today”, that tells the story of how a chemical weapon went from the battlefield to the streets. In this conversation, we speak about her work, how she came to write the history of tear gas, as both the history of state violence and resistance.
I asked Anna for five things that have influenced her intellectual and political journeys, and she picked
1. Donna Haraway – Cyborg Manifesto
2. Adrienne Rich – Cartographies of Silence (poem)
3. Capitalism is the Crisis Banner
