Reforms in post-Mao China have led to the rise of social movements and collective action. The FalunGong movement, a semi-religious movement, in particular has caught worldwide attention. Indeed, social protests have become a norm in China.

The term ‘Bakhtin Circle’ is used to refer to a group of Russian thinkers centred around Mikhail Bakhtin in the years following the 1917 Revolution. The group's prime concern was with the importance of questions of language-use in social life, and with the way in which language-use registered conflicts between social groups and classes. Prominent members, as well as Bakhtin himself, included P.N. Medvedev and V.N. Voloshinov. Between 1929, when a number of members were arrested, and his death in 1975, (...) Bakhtin continued to work on the issues which had occupied the group. (shrink)

In this article I provide a Spinozist perspective on popular power. It is written as a blog post for a popular audience, and draws on my book, Potentia: Hobbes and Spinoza on Power and Popular Politics (OUP: 2020).

As participatory digital media have moved from the peripheries to the center of politics and protest, so too have grown the intensity and complexity with which political discourses have become enme...

Based on a dataset of more than 5,000 contentious collective actions from 1700-2000, this paper examines the relation between popular protest and democratization of the Danish political system. The first wave of protests began in the 1830s and culminated in 1848 with the fall of absolutism and the transition to constitutional monarchy. The next protest wave from 1885 to 1887 arose from the so-called ‘constitutional struggle’ and mobilized hundreds of thousands of ordinary Danes, and contributed to the (...) parliamentarization and nationalization of the political system. The third wave unfolded around the end of World War II, while the hitherto last wave of popular struggle erupted in 1968 with the youth rebellion. The analysis show that ‘democracy’ was the central issue of contention in all four of these protest waves, and support the main thesis that periods of intense interaction between popular protest and the state have had a decisive formative influence on the genesis and further development of Danish democracy. (shrink)

The technological revolution and appropriation of internet tools began to reshape the material basis of society and the urban space in collaborative, grassroots, leaderless, and participatory actions. The protest squares’ representation on Television screens and mainstream media has been broad. Various health, governmental, societal, and urban challenges have marked the advent of the Covid-19 virus. Inequalities have become more salient as poor people and minorities are more affected by the virus. Social distancing makes the typical forms of protest (...) impossible to carry out. Under social distancing, some state-led policies took advantage of social media to focus on the Covid-19 pandemic to silence social and political activities, censor criticism, and control the press. However, during the pandemic era, the movements for social justice have been particularly active, focusing on defending workers’ rights, mutual aid and solidarity, monitoring policymakers, and popular education. These progressive movements combined concrete practices and experiences to confront the reactionary, capitalist, and governmental actors that sought to shape and envision the world. Through different case studies of protest movements during the pandemic in Europe, the UK, and Asia, this paper argues that at the time of rising racial, social, and economic inequalities, the social activities adapted to the circumstances determined by the social distancing and the impossibility of people gathering in physical spaces. Subsequently, the people in different countries had various individual and collective responses to the support of health workers, systemic inequalities, loss of jobs, and other societal and financial challenges imposed by the governments. It means that, rather than disappearing, the social movements have adapted to the unexpected situations during the pandemic outbreak. The pandemic broke the new digital global wave of protests in this sense. (shrink)

Xi Chen explores the question of why there has been a dramatic rise in and routinization of social protests in China since the early 1990s. Drawing on case studies, in-depth interviews and a unique data set of about 1,000 government records of collective petitions, this book examines how the political structure in Reform China has encouraged Chinese farmers, workers, pensioners, disabled people and demobilized soldiers to pursue their interests and claim their rights by staging collective protests. Chen suggests that routinized (...) contentious bargaining between the government and ordinary people has remedied the weaknesses of the Chinese political system and contributed to the regime's resilience. Social Protest and Contentious Authoritarianism in China challenges the conventional wisdom that authoritarian regimes always repress popular collective protest and that popular collective action tends to destabilize authoritarian regimes. (shrink)

When bringing philosophical attention to bear on social movement slogans in general, philosophers have often focused on their communicative nature—particularly the hermeneutical failures that arise in discourse. Some of the most popular of these failures are illustrated in ‘all lives matter’ retorts to ‘black lives matter’ pronouncements. Although highlighting and criticizing these failures provides much needed insight into social movement slogans as a communicative practice, I claim that in doing so, philosophers and slogans’ users risk placing too much importance (...) on outgroup understandings. This emphasis is misguided because gaining such uptake is not required of particular slogans to perform their functions; indeed it is an inherent risk of them. I show how such an emphasis can also be distracting to users. Since social movement slogans that express values are first and foremost for users, I argue for a shift in focus in what these slogans (such as ‘Black Is Beautiful’ and the more recent ‘Black Lives Matter’) do for users, as well as what they demand from users and enable them to express. When slogans have done these things, regardless of uptake, we can say they have performed one of their key functions. (shrink)

On the basis of substantial sociological material, the author analyzes the political and social consequences of the Maidan protests and shows that they constitute a revolutionary movement that led to regime change. Although the negative side of these protests manifested itself much more than the positive, the protests nonetheless embodied the popular demand for a new socio-political system and a radical change in the existing system of public life; this was the cause of both the Maidan protests and the (...) subsequent wave of political and social processes that took place in Ukraine. In light of the many unresolved problems and significant contradictions facing the country today, the author expresses the hope that the Ukrainian people will be able to adequately respond to the challenges of the day in order to bring about the propitious outcome well within their reach. (shrink)

Popper’s popular critics – Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Lakatos – replace his older, Wittgenstein-style critics, now defunct. His new critics played with the idea of criticism as beneficial, in vain search of variants of these that could better appeal to the public. Some of their criticism of Popper is valid but marginal for the dispute about rationality. He was Fallibilist; they hedged about it. He viewed learning from experience as learning from error; they were unclear about it. His view resembles (...) Freud’s reality principle; they hedged about this too, as they defended the stupid idea of constructive criticism. He stressed his criticism of the view of science as inductive; they endorsed it. They differed from him significantly regarding their intended readers: he had addressed those who readily admit criticism and his popular critics addressed those who find it hard to admit openly that criticism upsets them somewhat. Current popular criticism of Popper’s ideas shows yet again the logical relation between the critical attitude and liberalism: liberalism without critically mindedness is permissible, scarcely the other way around. Hence, we better read the objection that Popper’s popular critics have launched against him not as criticism proper, but as somewhat reasonable protest against his use of the highest standards in his relentless advocacy of liberalism and of criticism in his valuation of science and of democracy as joint. (shrink)

I assess the ways in which popular narratives about protests against police brutality in the summer of 2020 are ethically and epistemically problematic. I argue that many news outlets have pushed a false and misleading narrative that frames the protests as inherently violent and dangerous when in fact they were primarily non-violent. I analyze the ways in which these narratives are likely to increase epistemic injustice, including testimonial injustice against protestors. I then introduce a new framework that I call (...) ignorance bolstering, which is a form of epistemic injustice in which the privileged majority becomes entrenched in their their ignorance of nature of the protests and the racial injustices that sparked them. In particular, I analyze how words like "riot", "violence", "antifa", and "peaceful" are popularly misused to further entrench this ignorance. (shrink)

This volume examines Popper's philosophy by analyzing the criticism of his most popular critics: Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend and Imre Lakatos. They all followed his rejection of the traditional view of science as inductive. Starting from the assumption that Hume's criticism of induction is valid, the book explores the central criticism and objections that these three critics have raised. Their objections have met with great success, are significant and deserve paraphrase. One also may consider them reasonable protests against Popper's (...) high standards rather than fundamental criticisms of his philosophy. The book starts out with a preliminary discussion of some central background material and essentials of Popper's philosophy. It ends with nutshell representations of the philosophies of Popper. Kuhn, Feyerabend and Lakatos. The middle section of the book presents the connection between these philosophers and explains what their central ideas consists of, what the critical arguments are, how they presented them, and how valid they are. In the process, the author claims that Popper's popular critics used against him arguments that he had invented (and answered) without saying so. They differ from him mainly in that they demanded of all criticism that it should be constructive: do not stop believing a refuted theory unless there is a better alternative to it. Popper hardly ever discussed belief, delegating its study to psychology proper; he usually discussed only objective knowledge, knowledge that is public and thus open to public scrutiny. (shrink)

a new era of public protest began in 1999 with the Seattle World Trade Organization demonstrations, and continued through the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests and the 2013 Gezi Park insurrection in Istanbul. This new era of demonstrations differed from movements that had come before in the understanding of politics employed by the protesters, reconstructing popular imaginations about the future, bringing about a reconsideration of politics, its domain, and time itself.This article investigates the Occupy Gezi movement that began (...) in Gezi Park and led to the occupation of Istanbul’s Taksim Square. I examine the events through Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the Hungarian Revolution. Arendt’s five criteria for.. (shrink)

a new era of public protest began in 1999 with the Seattle World Trade Organization (WTO) demonstrations, and continued through the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests and the 2013 Gezi Park insurrection in Istanbul. This new era of demonstrations differed from movements that had come before in the understanding of politics employed by the protesters, reconstructing popular imaginations about the future, bringing about a reconsideration of politics, its domain, and time itself. This article investigates the Occupy Gezi movement (...) that began in Gezi Park and led to the occupation of Istanbul’s Taksim Square. I examine the events through Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the Hungarian Revolution. Arendt’s five criteria for evaluating the status of the Hungarian Revolution as a “true event” help shed light on the politics of Occupy Gezi (Arendt, “Totalitarian Imperialism” 5). In spite of the two movements’ similarly unprecedented, spontaneous, non-ideological, and un-hierarchical characters, the Gezi Park protests differed from the Hungarian Revolution in important ways. This is particularly true of the reaction of the protesters to the violence to which they were exposed. In refusing to react in kind to the state’s violence, the Gezi Park protesters created a new public domain for confronting the state. It is possible to consider this movement to have been an anti-violent rather than a non- or counter-violent resistance. Important political conclusions follow from this distinction. (shrink)

This paper uses an intersectional analysis to look at contemporary forms of women's popular protest in the hopes of raising questions about the explicit use of the gendered body in struggles for women's emancipation. Specifically, it explores the protests of SlutWalk and FEMEN to suggest that such body protests exemplify a problematic interface between third-wave and postfeminism. This interface or junction is most noticeable and problematic in relation to uncontested auto-sexualisation or ‘femmenism’. I argue that any subversive potential (...) these recent mobilisations might offer is limited through their reproduction of patriarchal, hegemonic norms. This piece is theoretical in the main, though it does include some preliminary qualitative research by way of drawing on websites, news reports, Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, and other online content produced by or about SlutWalk and FEMEN. The hope is to raise questions about the value of this increasingly pervasive use of sexualised, gender protest for feminist organising, not merely as an academic exercise but for its utility in practice. (shrink)

This book presents a new explanation of the rise, development and demise of social movements and cycles of protest in autocracies; the conditions under which protest becomes rebellion; and the impact of protest and rebellion on democratization. Focusing on poor indigenous villages in Mexico's authoritarian regime, the book shows that the spread of US Protestant missionaries and the competition for indigenous souls motivated the Catholic Church to become a major promoter of indigenous movements for land redistribution and (...) indigenous rights. The book explains why the outbreak of local rebellions, the transformation of indigenous claims for land into demands for ethnic autonomy and self-determination, and the threat of a generalized social uprising motivated national elites to democratize. Drawing on an original dataset of indigenous collective action and on extensive fieldwork, the empirical analysis of the book combines quantitative evidence with case studies and life histories. (shrink)

Dario Martinelli examines the nature of songs of social protest (SSPs) in Give Peace a Chant: Popular Music, Politics and Social Protest and provides readers with a book that is engaging, provoking, and enjoyable. Martinelli’s research is thorough, astute, and structured in a way that is both rigorous and accessible. Combining typology with several case studies, Martinelli achieves his stated goal of showing how context, song lyrics, and the music itself are organic and equally important elements that (...) constitute SSPs. (shrink)

This essay takes a critical and reflective look at two recently published books on contentious politics in the Balkans and Eastern Europe: Social Movements in the Balkans and Ideology and Social Protests in Eastern Europe. Focusing on regions somewhat neglected in scholarly analyses of the recent global upsurge of protests, these books aim to fill the gap by highlighting some contextual and regional specificities: a position of economic and geo-political periphery, weak or unconsolidated democratic institutions, post-socialist and transitional environments, societal (...) divisions, etc. By critically assessing both contributions, in a manner that looks for their complementarity, this essay: examines the characteristics of popular mobilizations and grievances in Southeast and Eastern Europe; questions dominant narratives of political and economic transition and EU integration; re-evaluates socialist heritage and post-socialist political trajectories; discusses the possibilities of articulating political alternatives to representative democracy and free market economy; and addresses the burden of conflicting memories and attitudes towards the region?s socialist past. (shrink)

A particularly important topic for Marxist theory is that of popular politics: the ways in which the underclasses of society express their interests and values through collective action. Classical Marxism postulates a fundamental conflict of interest among classes. It holds that exploited classes will come to an accurate assessment of their class interests, and will engage in appropriate collective actions to secure those interests. The result is a predicted variety of forms of underclass collective action: boycotts, rent strikes, tax (...) and food riots, rebellion, and revolution. Underclass members of society instigate and support such protests because it is in their material class interest to do so. It will emerge, however, that this account is too schematic to provide a basis for explanation of popular politics. The microfoundations approach to Marxist theory will prove useful in this context because it directs us to some of the resources needed to provide a more adequate account of popular collective action. (shrink)

A particularly important topic for Marxist theory is that of popular politics: the ways in which the underclasses of society express their interests and values through collective action. Classical Marxism postulates a fundamental conflict of interest among classes. It holds that exploited classes will come to an accurate assessment of their class interests, and will engage in appropriate collective actions to secure those interests. The result is a predicted variety of forms of underclass collective action: boycotts, rent strikes, tax (...) and food riots, rebellion, and revolution. Underclass members of society instigate and support such protests because it is in their material class interest to do so. It will emerge, however, that this account is too schematic to provide a basis for explanation of popular politics. The microfoundations approach to Marxist theory will prove useful in this context because it directs us to some of the resources needed to provide a more adequate account of popular collective action. (shrink)

Annotation: The article contains the research concerning the possible impact of Karl Barth`s figure and theological issues on the theology of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st century. There is a comparative analysis of how powerful and significant was the level of impact of Barth`s scientific experience on the theologians of his era, in comparison with the most prominent representatives of Christian thought from the earlier centuries, beginning with the times of ancient church, the Middle Ages, (...) the 16th century protestant Reformation, as well as his contemporaries. As it was clarified, Karl Barth made a striking impulse for the further radical deconstruction of what is considered to be the achievements of 19th`s century liberal protestant theology (which made him a lot of detractors among his colleagues), made a loud accent on the necessity of the Christocentric approach to all the spheres of theology, newly updated, actualized and convincingly demonstrated the importance of ancient church creeds and dogmas in the field of Triadology and Christology, as well as in an unusual way he intensified and revived the intellectual search in the protestant universities and academies by his reshaping and changing the paradigms of the whole western theology in a radical way. In the article were taken into account some reviews on Barth`s “Epistle to the Romans” (second edition, 1922), which caused lively discussions and prolonged controversy because of specific and non-standard hermeneutical approaches to the biblical text, which Barth demonstrated in this one of the most eminent theological works of the 20th century. The article reveals not only the attitude towards Barth`s theological heritage that was showed by his protestant colleagues, but also reveals the sincere admiration for his theology from some Orthodox researchers, in particular, the honored professor of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, John Karavidopulos, and the world famous specialist in the history of Christianity and medieval intellectual history, Jaroslav Jan Pelikan Jr., who converted to Orthodoxy in 1998. In the article`s conclusion there`s a piece of information concerning the fact that the impact of Barth`s dogmatics and hermeneutics on the modern departments of theology is not so noticeable as one might expect. In particular, we can make such a conclusion because of (1) the absence of true consolidation and common vision about the methods of theologizing between the western universities and church seminaries, (2) the popularity of so called “natural theology” which nowadays often seems to be regarded as an important prerequisite for all further theological researches, while Barth himself was a categorical opponent of this discourse, (3) the domination of binary opposition between conservatives and liberals in context of some modern theological discussions, while Karl Barth always tried to organically combine his devotion to the protestant orthodoxy with his efforts to be relevant and adequate to the requirements of his time. (shrink)

Exploring online criticisms of the ‘take the knee’ protest during ‘Euro 2020’, this article examines how alt- and far-right conspiracies were both constructed and communicated via the social media platform, Twitter. By providing a novel exploration of alt-right conspiracies during an international football tournament, a qualitative thematic analysis of 1,388 original tweets relating to Euro 2020 was undertaken. The findings reveal how, in criticisms levelled at both ‘wokeism’ and the Black Lives Matter movement, antiwhite criticisms of the ‘take the (...) knee’ protest were embroiled in alt-right conspiracies that exposed an assumed Cultural Marxist, ‘woke agenda’ in the tournament’s organization and mainstream media coverage. In conclusion, it is argued that conspiratorial discourses, associated with the alt-right, provided a framework through which the protest could be understood. This emphasises how the significance of conspiracy functions to promote the wider dissemination of alt-right ideology across popular cultural contexts, such as sport. (shrink)

The hypothesis that terrorism often emerges when mass collective action declines and radicals take up arms to compensate for the weakness of a mass movement has been around for some time; however, it has never been tested systematically. In this article the authors investigate the relationship between terrorist violence and mass protest in the context of the Spanish transition to democracy. This period is known for its pacts and negotiations between political elites, but in fact, it was accompanied by (...) high levels of terrorist violence and popular mobilization. To test the hypothesis, the authors have created two data sets, one on victims of terrorism and another on participation in demonstrations. The data clearly confirm that terrorism erupted in Spain when participation in demonstrations started to decline. This result sheds new light on the nonstructural conditions associated with the onset of terrorist violence. (shrink)

In this essay, I make the interpretive claim that we cannot properly understand the Federalist without appreciating the extent to which the papers mount a sustained rejection of extra-constitutional democracy—practices in which people aim to assert authority over the terms of common life in ways that are not sanctioned by existing laws. I survey such practices, which were common in America before and after the Revolution. I argue that there is continuity between Publius’s justification for rejecting extra-constitutional democracy and his (...) justification for his preferred system against constitutional alternatives. Adequate analysis and evaluation of the Federalist’s arguments about faction, representation, and institutional design require attention to the double duty the arguments play against constitutional and extra-constitutional opposition. This interpretive argument supports several analytic and evaluative conclusions. First, we must distinguish a new form of “non-hierarchical dualist” constitutionalism, according to which irregular democratic activity need not be limited to extraordinary “constitutional moments” or revolutions. Second, the politically egalitarian character of procedures depends not on the procedures alone, but how the maintenance of such procedures limits other forms of democratic practice. Third, the argument suggests a novel defense of “uncivil” disobedient politics: one grounded not in contributions to democratic deliberation, but in the entitlements of citizens to direct assertions of authority over common life. (shrink)

Cruise ships are at the same time among the most popular and most controversial means of travel. Photos of oversized ships, passing through the historic center of Venice, have become iconic. This paper explores the background of the debate over cruise ships in Venice. Using research at the intersection of culture and technology, the history of technology, urban anthropology, and social movement theory, it sheds light on how the spatialization of the cruise industry through infrastructures affects Venice and the (...) lagoon. In this paper, I will retrace the development of these interdependencies to show how activists, associations, and citizen campaigners address and perform these entanglements. Protest has turned the ship into a powerful symbol for the infrastructural appropriation and transformation of natural and urban space. Since transportation and traffic routes influence people’s everyday lives, it is important to consider their impacts on practices, spaces, and relations, especially in a city like Venice, where footpaths and waterways form an important element of the identity of both the city and its inhabitants. Through its actions, its tacit knowledge of local space, and the explicit knowledge the protest network produces, it both opposes and adds to hegemonic discourses. I argue that the cruise ship has been transformed into a metaphor of global capitalism, which in turn renders it a symbol with transnational impact. (shrink)

Annotation: The article contains the research concerning the possible impact of Karl Barth`s figure and theological issues on the theology of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st century. There is a comparative analysis of how powerful and significant was the level of impact of Barth`s scientific experience on the theologians of his era, in comparison with the most prominent representatives of Christian thought from the earlier centuries, beginning with the times of ancient church, the Middle Ages, (...) the 16th century protestant Reformation, as well as his contemporaries. As it was clarified, Karl Barth made a striking impulse for the further radical deconstruction of what is considered to be the achievements of 19th`s century liberal protestant theology (which made him a lot of detractors among his colleagues), made a loud accent on the necessity of the Christocentric approach to all the spheres of theology, newly updated, actualized and convincingly demonstrated the importance of ancient church creeds and dogmas in the field of Triadology and Christology, as well as in an unusual way he intensified and revived the intellectual search in the protestant universities and academies by his reshaping and changing the paradigms of the whole western theology in a radical way. In the article were taken into account some reviews on Barth`s “Epistle to the Romans” (second edition, 1922), which caused lively discussions and prolonged controversy because of specific and non-standard hermeneutical approaches to the biblical text, which Barth demonstrated in this one of the most eminent theological works of the 20th century. The article reveals not only the attitude towards Barth`s theological heritage that was showed by his protestant colleagues, but also reveals the sincere admiration for his theology from some Orthodox researchers, in particular, the honored professor of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, John Karavidopulos, and the world famous specialist in the history of Christianity and medieval intellectual history, Jaroslav Jan Pelikan Jr., who converted to Orthodoxy in 1998. In the article`s conclusion there`s a piece of information concerning the fact that the impact of Barth`s dogmatics and hermeneutics on the modern departments of theology is not so noticeable as one might expect. In particular, we can make such a conclusion because of (1) the absence of true consolidation and common vision about the methods of theologizing between the western universities and church seminaries, (2) the popularity of so called “natural theology” which nowadays often seems to be regarded as an important prerequisite for all further theological researches, while Barth himself was a categorical opponent of this discourse, (3) the domination of binary opposition between conservatives and liberals in context of some modern theological discussions, while Karl Barth always tried to organically combine his devotion to the protestant orthodoxy with his efforts to be relevant and adequate to the requirements of his time. (shrink)

Control over food supply was advanced in the kingdom of France in the Eighteenth century by Physiocrat economists under the seemingly advantageous label of 'freedom of grain trade'. In 1764 these reforms brought about a rise in grain prices and generated an artificial dearth that ruined the poor, some of whom died from malnutrition. The King halted the reform and re-established the old regime of regulated prices; in order to maintain the delicate balance between prices and wages, the monarchy tried (...) to limit speculation in subsistence goods and achieved some success in regulating the provisioning of public markets. Le Mercier de la Riviere concluded that executing these reforms required more effective political control. After 1774 the new king gave the Physiocratic reforms a second chance, reforming property rights and establishing an aristocracy of the landed rich. Again, this led to price hikes and as a result so-called 'popular emotions' erupted. Turgot ordered military intervention to dispel the protesters, marking a first rupture between the monarchy and the people over speculation on subsistence. Turgot's experiment failed and he was dismissed, but the Physiocracy had discovered that the market in subsistence offered new opportunities for economic power under the misleading legitimacy of 'economic laws'. Turgot's followers, Dupont de Nemours and Condorcet, continued to develop this 'theory' that was later translated into a 'scientific language' that ultimately asserted the autonomy of the economic sphere and its alleged independence from ethics and politics. The paper examines the continuity of events through the six great jacqueries and the French Revolution, including the all- important agrarian reform that ensued after 1792. Robespierre's concept of 'popular political economy' is analysed and compared with the notion of unfettered private property rights that lies at the heart of neoliberalism. (shrink)

In a series of articles written for the Neue Rhenische Zeitung in 1850, later published by Friedrich Engels as The Class Struggles in France, Karl Marx looked back on the failed French revolution of 1848 and attempted to explain how the democratic aspirations that inspired the February assault on the July Monarchy-and promised to fulfill the dashed hopes of 1789, 1792, and 1830-also led to its termination in the reactionary popular dictatorship of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. Popular sovereignty, which (...) had so often defined the emancipatory visions of two generations of radical activists and thinkers was now not only an obstacle to genuine emancipation, but a plebiscitary source of power for newly emergent forms of political domination. Bonapartism became, for Marx, an important way of understanding the complex internal dynamics of popular-and later "populist"-authoritarianism. It is an analysis that continues to resonate powerfully today. The national enthusiasm that propelled the revolution forward, and which overturned the hated regime of Louis Phillippe in three glorious days, had successfully established for the first time in history a parliamentary republic based in universal male suffrage. The Second Republic's provisional government was immediately thrown into a legitimation crisis, however, by the underlying sectional, parliamentary, and class conflicts lurking beneath its illusory foundation in the people's unitary will. When the popular classes of Paris returned to the barricades in June to protest the conservative government's closure of the National Workshops-and to convert the political revolution into a social revolution based in the "right to work"-they were abandoned by their fellow citizens and thousands were massacred in the streets by Cavaignac's National Guard. The "fantastic republic" built around the pretensions of national unity, Marx proclaimed, quickly "dissolved in powder and smoke." Tocqueville described the June days as a "slave's war," and in its aftermath the Party of Order quickly consolidated its power against any furthering of revolutionary aspiration. (shrink)

Studies of religious meaning-making, especially on young adults, tend to prioritize the views of religious elites and orthodox doctrines. By focusing on the everyday activity of romantic relationships, a topic that has no orthodox position, this article analyzes both how religious elites construct discursive fields of meaning and how laity negotiate this field. Drawing on a study of popular Christian relationship advice books and interviews with young evangelicals, I describe a disrupted landscape produced by evangelical cultural elite discourses that (...) becomes an important context for how young adults imagine and pursue relationships. Yet these efforts, for both evangelical elites and young adults, operate within a broader cultural context of secular “hooking up” practices which serves to create some cohesion among the two groups while also challenging the relevance of the evangelical cultural elite discourses, requiring young adults to engage in their own process of religious meaning-making. (shrink)

This article presents two of Foucault’s lesser known notions, “justice fonctionnelle" and “stratégie du pourtour”, in order to interrogate the role of legislators in regard to the policing of political dissent. This article contains three parts. First, I present the two lesser known notions referred to above. Then, I provide my understanding of the role of law for Foucault. Finally, in the third part, I explain how a consensual relationship between the police and legislators is established. I present briefly the (...) work of Avrom Sherr and outline the contents of a recent U.S. anti-protest law which gives the police greater powers to redefine the legal nature of public space and to make arrests without having to show criminal intent on the part of protesters. My aim is to further think through the paradox that Foucault mentioned in his lectures on security societies: non-judicial methods used in security processes undermine the primacy of law but also lead to the overproduction of laws. (shrink)

Intrigued by the so-called “rebellion of the poor,” this paper traces back the current South African concern with popular protest to its reconfiguration during the last years of the apartheid order. Focusing on the discourse around grassroots resistance in the mid- to late-1980s, I begin by showing how, in juxtaposition to an ideal notion of civil society, popular mobilization had been largely delegitimized and the emancipatory politics of ungovernability recast as antidemocratic by the first few years of (...) the post-apartheid regime. In deploying particular notions of violence and culture, this discursive shift, I suggest, fed into reconstructing the ungovernable subject as the racial other of the new South Africa’s citizenry. The second part of the paper mobilizes Foucault’s genealogy of liberalism to draw parallels between this process and the liberal effort to resolve the potentially conflicting principles of governing the economic subject and the subject of rights within the realm of civil society. Finally, via the postcolonial critique of liberal notions of civility and their rootedness in racial thinking, I suggest that civil society secures the governability of the population through rendering the potentially disruptive freedom of the people as the excess freedom of the racialized other. (shrink)

The latest news from our planet is threatening: climate change, pollution, forest loss, species extinctions. All these words are frightening and there is no sign of improvement. Simple logic leads to the conclusion that humanity has to react, for its own survival. But at the scale of a human being, it is less obvious. Organizing one’s daily life in order to preserve the environment implies self-questioning, changing habits, sacrificing some comfort. In one word, it is an effort. Then, what justifies (...) such an effort? The personal choice to act in order to preserve our environment is often made by simple altruism. This choice is based on our love for other human beings: our love for the others grounds our effort. Our moral values, our ethical reflections and our religious beliefs are the deep core of these choices. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15.12 NRSV). This Charter shows the moral and religious values that can help us react regarding the current environmental crisis and it should empower us to transcend the ideas of effort and sacrifice in order to consider the respect of the shared house, in a prophetic fulfillment of the being. (shrink)

Popular protest is occurring on a remarkable scale in South Africa. Nonetheless, there is a significant degree to which it tends to be organized and articulated through the local. This contribution argues that while the political limitations of purely local modes of organization are clear, it should not be assumed that local struggles are some sort of misguided distraction from building a broader progressive movement. It is suggested that, on the contrary, the best prospects for the emergence of (...) a broader popular struggle lie in building, sustaining and linking local struggles. (shrink)

In this essay I return to narratives about the popular uprisings of June 2013 in Brazil, considering that these discourses are still directly and indirectly present in the ways in which we understand our current reality, above all the ascension of the rightwing and our possible resistance to the growing and multiple fascist elements in our society today. I analyze certain current positions related to punitive and conservative reactions to the popular protests, which end up concluding that the (...) uprisings generated “an even greater evil.” I bring to light some premises hidden in these statements which, by operating from points of view that are both historical and philosophical, not only compromise our past, but also mortgage our future. (shrink)

An exploration of the post-politics of global capitalism in theory and practice Our age is celebrated as the triumph of liberal democracy. Old ideological battles have been decisively resolved in favour of freedom and the market. We are told that we have moved 'beyond left and right'; that we are 'all in this together'. Any remaining differences are to be addressed through expert knowledge, consensual deliberation and participatory governance. Yet the 'end of history' has also been marked by widespread disillusion (...) with mainstream politics and a rise in nationalist and religious fundamentalisms. And now an explosion of popular protests is challenging technocratic regulation and the power of markets in the name of democracy itself. This collection makes sense of this situation by critically engaging with the influential theory of 'the post-political' developed by Chantal Mouffe, Jacques Ranciere, Slavoj Zizek and others. Through a multi-dimensional and fiercely contested assessment of contemporary depoliticisation, The Post-Political and Its Discontents urges us to confront the closure of our political horizons and re-imagine the possibility of emancipatory change. ". (shrink)