Counteractive Frictions

A concept introduced by Ly et al. for the deliberate, strategically produced disruptions that marginalised communities generate to contest hegemonic infrastructures — petitions, protests, Human Rights Tribunal filings, targeted social-media campaigns, guerrilla postering. Counteractive frictions materialise and contest institutional politics, accumulate through mobilisation, disrupt dominant norms, and force reconfiguration of power relations. The term extends Korn & Voida's "designing with friction" from designer-led provocation to community-generated political praxis, and is useful for understanding how disabled students and other disabled communities negotiate access with resistant institutions.