TXT / ESSAYD/001
Govern without governing: on resistance committees
How can grassroots movements sustain their resistance while engaging formal power — without being absorbed by it?
Brick by brick, the Sudanese people laid the structures of dissent, refusal and defiance — and improvised radical geographies of solidarity to protect their neighbourhoods and the revolution.
A declaration of chaos and collective imagination.
Matarees' (مَتاريـــس) meaning barricades, is inspired by the barricades Sudanese protestors built throughout the revolution of December 2018. Brick by brick, the Sudanese people laid the structures of dissent, refusal and defiance, and improvised radical geographies of solidarity and defence to protect their neighbourhoods and the revolution.
From these barricades rises Matarees', an urban intifada, a statement of refusal and declaration of chaos and collective imagination. A platform and a space that refuses colonial, imperial, patriarchal and authoritarian geographies of power.
It brings together activism, research and policy to disrupt, deconstruct and dismantle systems of domination, while building new ways of existing, revolting and learning from the grassroots.
Matarees' stands at the intersection of feminist/grassroots struggles and resistance, decolonial worlds and revolutionary thought, grounding itself in the ongoing struggle for liberation in Sudan and across the Global South.
A world where the barricade becomes not a symbol of division, but of collective imagination, freedom, radical care, and self-governance and determination.
The heart of Matarees'. Inspired by the neighbourhood and resistance committees that emerged during Sudan's revolution. It explores how grassroots infrastructures sustain revolutionary energy — how they mobilise, organise collective life, and negotiate with power without being absorbed by it.
The political and cultural heartbeat of Matarees'. Through Intifada, the revolutionary spirit is sustained through education, storytelling, and collective imagination — keeping alive the ideas, solidarities, and tactics born in Sudan's streets. A living manifesto, archive and laboratory at once.
Rooted in ecological decoloniality. Land and resistance are not only environmental issues but deeply ontological and political ones. In Earthworks, climate justice is a struggle for life itself — an act of resistance against extraction, enclosure, and dispossession. The earth is not a resource; it is kin, relation, archive, and witness.
The critical and imaginative infrastructure of Matarees'. It exists to challenge who produces knowledge, how it is produced, and for whom. Research is not extractive but insurgent — a tool of resistance and collective liberation. The street, the neighbourhood, and the earth become sites of theory-making.
Centring lived experience and collective knowledge. Refusing the colonial, imperial, and patriarchal architectures of thought.
Co-designed with communities and peer researchers. Studies that belong to those who live them.
Knowledge that is open, creative, and bilingual — Arabic and English — so the work returns to where it came from.
Bridges across movements, sectors, and geographies. Global South to Global South. Street to street.
How can grassroots movements sustain their resistance while engaging formal power — without being absorbed by it?
A counter-cartography of dissent, rebuilt neighbourhood by neighbourhood, street by street.
Peer researchers sit with neighbourhood organisers. What did the committees know that the theorists didn't?
Cooperative seed exchange as climate resistance in the Gezira. Thinking–feeling with the earth.
Khartoum · Cairo · Santiago · Johannesburg · Beirut · London. Every other Sunday.
Why post-war rebuilding must be revolutionary continuation — not technocratic repair.
Matarees' is open infrastructure. We welcome researchers, organisers, artists, gardeners, cooks, coders, cartographers — anyone committed to building from the grassroots. Subscribe for the dispatch, open calls, and radical pedagogy sessions.