QUE(E)RYING THE ECOTERRORIST: NEOLIBERAL CAPITALISM, POLITICAL REPRESSION AS DISCIPLINE, AND THE SPECTACLE OF DIRECT ACTION

The following analysis forges an innovative and interdisciplinary bridge between theory and practice that brings together an anthropological lens emphasizing local modes of knowledge, a communication lens underscoring rhetoric and environmental communication, and a digital media lens that stresses social media and e-communities. Through a mixed-methodology of critical discourse analysis, ethnography and performance studies, this project examines the ways in which anarchist antispeciesists co-construct and negotiate identity and power within physical and digital communities through disidentification. The project relied on a strong commitment to collaborative engagement with the research population and a queer disengagement with traditional social movement theories to expand the political imaginary through political theater. Activists utilize performative protest as both a methodology to disrupt hegemonic speciesism and also a playful solidification amongst politically repressed, geographically dispersed, oftentimes clandestine non-State actors.