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Abstract
The first step in working towards change is knowing that alternatives exist—that change is possible. I argue that seeing everyday possibilities in action can be a joyful rupture that catalyzes ethical learning and transformative change. I demonstrate this using almost five years of ethnographic research with the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR). As an interdisciplinary feminist and anticolonial marine science laboratory, CLEAR works towards justice by changing science from within science. After introducing CLEAR and the values that inform their work, I describe a case study of a specific CLEAR project, citational politics. By tracing the project’s development through lab meetings, I show that through CLEAR meetings, members learn other possibilities for what a meeting can be and do. I then continue the story of the citational politics project to explore how the process of engaging with citational politics can shape the type of scholar we become. I draw on Gloria Anzaldúa’s theory of conocimiento to propose a framework for understanding how ruptures can initiate forms of learning that foster shifts in consciousness capable of catalyzing collective action. I conclude the citational politics project by discussing how joy can be a form of rupture than engenders conocimiento. In between each of the chapters, interludes provide background and context that connects to the surrounding chapters. I conclude by exploring what change can look like by addressing some of the common myths found in justice work. By doing everyday things, differently, CLEAR embodies possibility.