Rundale

By Kathleen Stokes

When critiquing and proposing change, it is important to also consider the price of inertia or inaction. What happens if we remain steadfast within current ways of thinking and doing? Leaving things as they are might seem an easier option, but this overlooks all that can be gained from pursuing the uncertain trajectory of change with intent. 

Rundale’s May edition consists of three articles about the need for change – something that appears more palpable and necessary with each passing day of the ongoing genocide in Palestine. The contributions touch on the problems and limitations associated with the status quo, and makes the case for a possible way forward. 

This month’s contributions are also entirely from guest writers; we are keen to broaden the range of voices within Rundale, so you can expect to see more guest contributions in future.

Rebecca Vining and Criostóir King question the Irish agri-food system’s export orientation and colonial logics, and ask what it truly means to “feed the world”. They advocate for a transformation of Irish agri-food to privilege food access and sovereignty over profit-seeking. 

Aidan Beatty and Conor McCabe’s intervention highlights the absence of capitalism within Irish studies, despite its pervasive prominence in shaping Irish development. Arguing that “Irish Studies scholars need to start thinking about capitalism” they call for an Irish capitalist studies.

Finally, László Molnárfi and Elisa Zito write about the Free Trinity encampment and the wider proliferation Palestine solidarity encampments on university campuses. Framing them as representative of “the youth’s will to challenge the very forms of social existence we have long been told are unquestionable,” they emphasize the need to extend and connect such struggles beyond campuses.

According to David Graeber, prefigurative politics is the act of mirroring the world that we want to see in present action. The encampments show that the world students want to see is radically democratic and completely antithetical to the hierarchical, rigid, and bureaucratic structures that fester under capitalism and exert a suffocating grip on the neoliberal university.

This month we invite readers to, as Baptista and Cirola say, move from problematisation to proposition. Any sort of change invariably invites conflict, risk and negotiation, but what happens if we simply continued as we are? What would a better future  look like, and how can we move towards it now?