Activist Arcana: The Creation of Tarot in and for Radical Leftist Subcultures

• In Event: Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 9: Tactics & Repertoires: Invention, Legitimization, Radicalization

Abstract

Contemporary activist subcultures engage in prefigurative politics (Gamson 1991), or “the experimentation and practice of new cultural models” (Melucci 1989: 60). Within the last fifteen years, a number of tarot decks have developed out of activist subcultures. In this paper I explore how activists are articulating prefigurative politics in tarot decks. Specifically, I examine The Collective Tarot, Delta Enduring Tarot, Next World Tarot, The Slow Holler Tarot, and The Numinous Tarot. These decks focus on horizontal power distribution, organizing tactics and dynamics, economic inequality, representation of LGBTQ, people of color, disabled, and non-classical European bodies and calls for a revolutionary politic. The ‘new world in our hearts’ is being represented on cards, both as an art form and as a tool for daily practice. Overall, I find changes in the cards align with activists’ political beliefs. There is an inclusion of diversified bodies, a critique of social institutions, and an incorporation of modern forms of protest. The use of tarot is significant both as a cultural artifact in and of itself, but also as a tool of engagement that activists are integrating into their practices. In the context of larger societal inequalities, how activists articulate and understand their worlds furthers
our knowledge of experimentations in social justice.

Author

• Sarah Megan Hanks, CUNY-John Jay College