Public intellectuals,political satire and the birth of activist public relations: The case of Attic Comedy

The purpose of this article is to explore the origins of dissent public relations and to establish its emergence in the context of the ancient Greek comedy represented by Aristophanes. Indeed, Attic Comedy (also known as Old Comedy) was the first great example of today’s mass communication, in which political satire was used to dissent and protest against political and social circumstances in fifth-century BC Athens. This situation was conditioned by the Peloponnesian War and its political, economic and social consequences. From this perspective, this article also constitutes an investigation into the intellectual history of public relations, of which Aristophanes can be considered to be one of the first practitioners.     

Counter-conducts: A Foucauldian Analytics of Protest

The influence of Foucault on studies of social movements, dissent and protest is not as direct as might be imagined. He is generally regarded as focusing more on the analysis of power and government than forms of resistance. This is reflected in the governmentality literature, which tends to treat dissent and protest as an afterthought, or failure of government. However, Foucault's notion of ‘counter-conducts’ has much to offer the study of dispersed, heterogeneous and variegated forms of resistance in contemporary global politics. Using the protests that have accompanied summits including Seattle, Johannesburg, Prague, London and Copenhagen to illustrate an analytics of protest in operation, this article shows how a Foucauldian perspective can map the close interrelationship between regimes of government and practices of resistance. By adopting a practices and mentalities focus, rather than an actor-centric approach, and by seeking to destabilize the binaries of power and resistance, and government and freedom, that have structured much of political thought, an analytics of protest approach illuminates the mutually constitutive relationship between dominant power relationships and counter-conducts, and shows how protests both disrupt and reinforce the status quo, at the same time.     

ON 'MAELSTROMS LARGE AND SMALL,METAPHORICAL AND ACTUAL': 'GRAY ZONES' IN THE WRITINGS OF PRIMO LEVI

This article examines the work of Primo Levi, with a focus on the tensions between ‘witness’ and ‘public intellectual’ in Levi's work. It analyses the notion of ‘gray zones’ in Levi's writings, where it functions as a way of indicating transformations in political action and public discourse in the wake of Auschwitz: most importantly, the Nazi genocide undermined the position of ‘spectator’ crucial to liberal discourse by implicating the spectator as a ‘bystander’. The study goes on to discuss the concepts of ‘work’, ‘science’ and ‘intellect’ in Levi's writing, showing how these categories reflect Levi's ultimately unsuccessful struggle to uncover a mode of political thought and public intervention adequate to the changes in political space of which the ‘gray zone’ is symptomatic, i.e. a condition of universal complicity and powerlessness. It concludes that implicit (and undeveloped) in Levi's thought is a set of ‘aesthetico-political’ presuppositions concerned with the articulation of founding, legitimacy and judgement. These presuppositions challenge the reliance of emancipatory discourses upon subjectivity and the logic of self-determination, indicating the need for a politics based on ‘pedagogical accountability’. Resisting the postmodern logic of ‘testimony’, which emerges in the gap between universal claims and their performance and hence dismantles the ‘outside’ as a space of judgement, i.e. the determination of the legitimacy of actions, the politics of pedagogical accountability grounds such an outside in the conjoining of power, responsibility for the world and boundary thinking. This space ‘outside’ ideology and the circulation of subjectivities emerges via resistance to the specifically ‘anti-political’ violence pervasive in late capitalism, and through the clarification of the distinction between this mode of violence and that (‘pre-political’) violence aimed at ‘subjects’.     

Public sphere as assemblage: the cultural politics of roadside memorialization

This paper investigates contemporary academic accounts of the public sphere. In particular, it takes stock of post‐Habermasian public sphere scholarship, and acknowledges a lively and variegated debate concerning the multiple ways in which individuals engage in contemporary political affairs. A critical eye is cast over a range of key insights which have come to establish the parameters of what ‘counts’ as a/the public sphere, who can be involved, and where and how communicative networks are established. This opens up the conceptual space for re‐imagining a/the public sphere as an assemblage. Making use of recent developments in Deleuzian‐inspired assemblage theory – most especially drawn from DeLanda's (2006) ‘new philosophy of society’ – the paper sets out an alternative perspective on the notion of the public sphere, and regards it as a space of connectivity brought into being through a contingent and heterogeneous assemblage of discursive, visual and performative practices. This is mapped out with reference to the cultural politics of roadside memorialization. However, a/the public sphere as an assemblage is not simply a ‘social construction’ brought into being through a logic of connectivity, but is an emergent and ephemeral space which reflexively nurtures and assembles the cultural politics (and political cultures) of which it is an integral part. The discussion concludes, then, with a consideration of the contribution of assemblage theory to public sphere studies. (Also see Campbell 2009a)     

The public private sphere: family narrative and democracy in Argentina and South Africa

This article explores the paradoxical prominence of seemingly private family stories and memories in the democratic public spheres emerging in the wake of the ‘Dirty War’ in Argentina and apartheid in South Africa. In part because the discourse of the family was used in these cases to both uphold and protest dictatorial regimes, individuals who lost family members to state violence became powerful moral agents in the post‐dictatorship and post‐apartheid periods. Narratives told by and about these individuals – ranging from personal testimony given in each country’s truth commission to representations in theatre, fiction and film – have worked to constitute what may be called a ‘public private sphere’. They not only express personal grief, but also (and especially in wider cultural circulation) have been emplotted and mobilised to construct democratic publics. These may or may not correspond to the nationwide publics envisioned in state discourses of reconciliation. Using genealogical fiction surrounding ‘disappeared children’ in Argentina as a lens to analyse South Africa, this article argues that stories of children attempting to piece together their family histories reveal this dynamic as they become sites for convening democratic publics and critiquing transitional politics.     

‘The outraged young’: young Europeans,civic engagement and the new media in a time of crisis

Public involvement in traditional political institutions has declined significantly over the past few decades, leading to what some have seen as a crisis in citizenship. This trend is most striking amongst young people, who have become increasingly alienated from mainstream electoral politics in Europe. Nevertheless, there is overwhelming evidence to show that younger citizens are not apathetic about ‘politics’ – they have their own views and engage in democracy in a wide variety of ways that seem relevant to their everyday lives. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, young Europeans have borne the brunt of austerity in public spending: from spiralling youth unemployment, to cuts in youth services, to increased university tuition fees. In this context, the rise and proliferation of youth protest in Europe is hardly surprising. Indeed, youth activism has become a major feature of the European political landscape: from mass demonstrations of the ‘outraged young’ against political corruption and youth unemployment, to the Occupy movement against the excesses of global capitalism, to the emergence of new political parties. This article examines the role that the new media has played in the development of these protest movements across the continent. It argues that ‘digitally networked action’ has enabled a ‘quickening’ of youth participation – an intensification of political participation amongst young, highly educated citizens in search of a mouthpiece for their ‘indignation’.     

Public Spaces of Dissent

This article looks at some recent developments in the relationship between public space and dissent. The article does this by firstly distinguishing between dissent and resistance. Dissent is based broadly around disagreements between individuals in particular groups and contexts against a perceived grievance of some sort. As a result dissent can arise in a variety of contexts, especially within everyday life, popular culture, and with small acts of defiance against frustrations one experiences. These acts can also assume more overtly political modes in the form of resistance as when people demonstrate in the streets. The distinction is therefore useful because it helps us understand how the state and other governance mechanisms adopt policies and strategies to pre-empt dissent and thereby prevent dissent from spilling over into resistance located in particular places. The article will examine how the state and governance have changed the way in which they pre-empt the formation of spaces of dissent in order to effectively regulate them in the pre- and post-9/11 climate. Taking examples from the USA and the UK, the paper explores these points through global social movements, law and dissent, planning and designing dissent, and the surveillance of dissent.     

(De)mobilising and (mis)representing ‘youth’ in the Chinese workplace: political dependency,generational subordination and corporatisation in the Communist Youth League

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) youth organisation, the Communist Youth League (CYL, League), has an extensive grassroots network and approximately twelve million members in public and partially state-owned sectors of the economy, as well as a political mandate to promote ‘youth’ interests at work. This article examines the League’s operation in the Chinese workplace by analyzing qualitative data collected during fieldwork in twelve different sites in Beijing and Zhejiang province. It was hypothesised that as League organisations are under pressure to represent youth-specific demands, their response would be similar to the Trade Unions, which try to simultaneously remain loyal to pro-management Party committees and act as grassroots channels for advocacy. The article finds that League cadres occupy junior positions in political, generational and workplace hierarchies resulting to their multifaceted subordination to more senior power holders present, namely the management, Party Committee and Union leadership. The institutionalised ‘juniority’ of cadres creates strong disincentives for pro-youth employee initiatives and leads to the disarticulation of a distinctive ‘youth’ agenda. This institutional ‘gap’ in workplace representation has direct implications both for the welfare of young employees and for the future of industrial relations in China.     

Virus interruptus: An Arendtian exploration of political world‐building in pandemic times

Building upon a series of blog posts and conversations, two feminist scholars explore how political community, trust, responsibility and solidarity are affected by the COVID‐19 pandemic. We explore the ways in which we can engage in political world‐building during pandemic times through the work of Hannah Arendt. Following Arendt’s notion of the world as the space for human togetherness, we ask: how can we respond to COVID‐19’s interruptions to the familiarity of daily life and our relationship to public space? By extending relational accounts of public health and organizational ethics, we critique a narrow view of solidarity that focuses on individual compliance with public health directives. Instead, we argue that solidarity involves addressing structural inequities, both within public health and our wider community. Finally, we suggest possibilities for political world‐building by considering how new forms of human togetherness might emerge as we forge a collective ‘new normal’.     

Anna Hazare's Anti-Corruption Movement and the Limits of Mass Mobilization in India

A hunger strike that played upon Gandhi's legacy of civil disobedience and mass protest was India's capstone event for 2011. Initiated by Anna Hazare, a 74-year-old self-styled Gandhian, the protest targeted the government's new anti-corruption legislation, which Hazare proclaimed as too weak. Hazare's demand for a strong anti-corruption law, leading to the establishment of an independent ombudsman (Lokpal), had slowly gained momentum in the first half of 2011, when Hazare collected a sizeable following. It was his unexpected arrest on the eve of the August protest, however, that thrust him into the limelight, sparking candle-lit marches across the country and swelling the ranks of his movement, Indian Against Corruption (IAC). Hazare was hailed as a leader of Gandhian proportions and applauded for his humble origins, numerous awards, and ecologically conscious development work in Ralegan Siddhi, where Hazare took up residence in 1975, following a brief career in the army. His movement, which appeared to be climbing from strength to strength, was thought to be a major political force of lasting influence. But in the year since the Ramlila protest, Hazare's movement has lost steam, with key leaders oscillating between calling for a stronger movement based on ‘the people's guidance’ and entertaining the possibility of entering electoral politics through the formation of a new political party. This article investigates the reasons for the deceleration of the Hazare movement, with an emphasis on why Hazare failed to win the support of the liberal and left sections of society, particularly the intelligentsia.     

A Christmas Tree in Flames and Other – Visual – Stories: Looking at the Photojournalistic Coverage of the Greek Protests of December 2008

In December 2008, the killing of a fifteen-year-old boy by the Greek police triggered the country's worst civil unrest in decades and an outbreak of rage and violence, which turned into a wider protest expressing deep popular discontent and frustration with ageing problems in the country. Through a content analysis of themes appearing in eight media of different genre and political orientation, and using solely images as units of analysis, this paper examines the visual framing of these protests and its function in the public screen. The findings show that two frames are used to imply a distinction between Us (as normal citizens who protest peacefully) and Them (as ‘hooded hooligans’ who protest violently).     

The political is the personal: women’s participation in Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement

This article examines women’s lived experiences as new activists in social movements. Taiwanese women – many of them housewives – joined the Sunflower Movement, a large-scale protest against a trade pact with China, and a related anti-nuclear movement in 2014. This study demonstrates how new women activists’ everyday political practices mutually construct the public and private spheres in the Taiwanese context. By ‘making private public’, these new activists use discourses of citizenship and maternalism to connect politics to social issues and daily life. Public participation makes these women feel empowered, and their daily actions transform politics from a set of formal, institutionalized practices to a practical fact of everyday life. This research also challenges the reproduction of a rigid private/public division in previous feminist scholarship that regards family and childcare as a separate realm that hinders women’s public participation. In a marked break from past accounts, these women don’t separate their caring responsibilities from their political actions. By focusing on new activists’ political action in and through their family and childcare, this research calls into question scholarly discussions that view maternalism primarily as a public discourse for mobilizing women or a visual strategy for collective protest. By considering the disruptive potential of all acts of mothering, this study paints a more complex and nuanced picture of women and mothers as protesters and reveals how activist women’s actions in the family and private social networks can be a central part of maternalist strategies’ radical potential.     

The Cultural Politics of Childhood: Public Policies in Post‐authoritarian Chile

This article offers an interpretation of the cultural politics of childhood during the second decade of post‐authoritarian democracy in Chile (2001–2010), as sustained by the discourse of public policies in this area. I understand cultural politics as the combination of cultural contexts, social practices and political processes through which childhood is constructed in different societies and different times James and James (2008b). I develop a ‘textual’ analysis focusing on the discourse of the most recent official governmental policy document on childhood, which is still in force, as well as a ‘contextual’ analysis that examines the historical relationship between the state, public policies and childhood in different periods of Chile's history as a republic.     

Beyond the iconic protest images: the performance of ‘everyday life’ on social media during Gezi Park

ABSTRACT

Using the Gezi Park protests as a case study this article considers the performative component of protest movements including how and why protestors actively produce protest activity ‘on the ground’ and how this is expressed through visual images. It looks beyond iconic images which appear as emblematic of the protest and instead shifts our focus to consider the more ‘everyday’ or mundane activities which occur during a protest occupation, and explores how social media allows these images to have expressive and communicative dimensions. In this respect, protests can be performed through humdrum activities and this signifies a political voice which is communicated visually. The research is based on visual analysis of Twitter data and reveals methodological innovation in understanding how protestors communicate.     

Social media,temporality, and the legitimacy of protest

ABSTRACT

This article examines how the rise of social media affects the temporal relations of protest communication. Following a relational approach, it traces how regimes of temporality are constructed and transformed through the entanglement between media infrastructures, institutions, and practices. These regimes involve particular ‘speeds’ -the rate at which media content is renewed – as well as ‘temporal orientations’ towards present, past, and future. The article questions how specific temporal regimes enable or complicate protestors’ efforts to gain public legitimacy. A large body of research suggests that it is difficult to gain such legitimacy in the mainstream news cycle, in which protest is primarily covered from an ‘episodic’ perspective, ignoring larger protest issues. The present analysis suggests that despite the participatory affordances of social media, it has not become any easier to generate sustained public attention for structural protest issues. Drawing examples from three case studies, it demonstrates that the dominant mode of social media protest communication reproduces and reinforces the episodic focus of the mainstream news. While other temporal perspectives on protest are certainly developed in the alternative and mainstream news, as well as in activist social media communication, these do not fundamentally challenge the prevailing temporal orientation towards the present, towards the event.     

Uncertain citizenship and public deliberation in post‐apartheid South Africa

The post‐repressive‐regime South African government has actively convened a public sphere bristling with institutions and policies designed to facilitate public deliberation. However, certain apartheid legacies and contemporary political compromises facilitate the reach of power into the convened public sphere, leading to the corralling of public deliberation and the attempted silencing of critical voices. By the end of the Mbeki presidency, a cacophony of public dissent erupted, some of it insisting on the importance of open public critique and some of it seeking to limit and shape dissent itself. The article discusses ongoing contests over the meaning of publicness, locating the roots of these different ideas of publicness in different political and intellectual traditions, each with different understandings of the deliberative citizen. It suggests that participation in public debate is increasingly confined to the exertion of a narrowly defined notion of national democratic citizenship. Arguing that the formation of counterpublic spheres in South Africa is inhibited, the article considers the role of what it terms ‘capillaries’ of public deliberation, in which various kinds of radical critiques of cultural values, norms, identities and the fragmentation of historical consciousness take place.     

Love Without Borders?

Since 2000, Denmark has imposed some of the strictest immigration laws in Europe. Consequently, family reunification has become increasingly difficult for immigrants as well as for Danish citizens. In the fall of 2010, the Danish family reunification laws became subject to criticism and protest by a citizens' initiative called ‘Love without Borders’ (LWB). The article investigates how LWB managed to generate political momentum around love: an affect which seems to promise inclusion, liberation and togetherness for those directly affected by the laws as well as those attempting to change the laws. Yet the idealized version of love promoted by LWB happened to take the form of romantic intimacy predominantly consisting of straight, young and white-brown couples oriented towards reproduction. Our main argument is that despite its good intentions of supporting migration the activist campaign ‘Love without Borders’ ends up supporting whiteness as the body through which love must flow. As an indicator of the racialized discourses informing LWB's activism the article introduces the concept of white transraciality. Thus, to LWB love seems to promise affective ties to the nation, to the future and to the political system in ways that sustain white hegemony. Building mainly on Sara Ahmed's and Laurent Berlant's reflections on love as cultural politics the article analyzes posters, viral videos and newspaper debates in its discussion of the promises and pitfalls of love as an affective political tool.     

Counter-maps of the ordinary: occupation,subjectivity, and walking under curfew in Kashmir

ABSTRACT

This article examines practices of resistance that thwart Indian state’s control over everyday life in Kashmir. The state frequently uses ‘curfew’ to dominate public space, shut down ordinary mobility, and suppress pro-independence politics. Curfews are enforced through punitive prohibitions and by activating the militarised infrastructure built to reinforce Indian rule over the region since 1947. Yet, Kashmiris are not passive objects of this control. Through overt and hidden practices of resistance and disobedience, like sangbāzi and, what I call, counter-mapping, they keep their aspirations for independence alive, while rebuilding a semblance of everydayness under the occupation. Desire to walk freely becomes the key metaphor for freedom from military control. Based on ethnographic and theoretical material, the article makes a case that in spaces under long-term military occupations political subjectivity is primarily expressed and enacted as a bodily demand to become visible in public space.     

The Political Subject of Self-immolation

Abstract

This article examines the political practice of protest by self-burning. Focussing on Mohammed Bouazizi's self-burning in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid in 2010, I explore the intellectual background for, and implications of, conceptualising such acts as ‘self-sacrifices’ or ‘self-immolations’. I argue that the use of the concept of sacrifice to define the politics of the act, given the difficulties in determining intentionality, is to focus only on its retrospective interpretation or semiotic capture. The result is that the self-annihilating subject is bypassed altogether, and his or her distinctively suicidal politicality is ignored. I argue that these subjects do not occupy political space due to a myth-making appeal to transcendence, heroic urge to sovereignty or assumed desire for community. Rather, drawing on Walter Benjamin, I argue that in such acts we bear witness to the shattering of sovereign order by a reminder to a politically constitutive excess.