Real Politics in Occupy: Transcending the Rules of the Day

Abstract

This paper analyses the Occupy movement in order to explore the mode of its participants' engagement with radical change. It also sketches the framework of real politics within which they were acting. It is a politics that accepts the constitutive lack of the political sphere, irreducibility of social antagonisms and alterity. First, by utilising Lacan and Derrida's theoretical constructions, the article examines ways in which Occupy aimed to transcend the ‘rules of the day’. It then describes the challenges of non-hierarchical organising and radical inclusion that the movement faced. Subsequently, I briefly analyse 2 aporias that were endured in Occupy: between the ideal and non-ideal as well as between unity and singularity. These aporias did not mark a stalemate that paralysed the movement but pointed to the limits that had to be negotiated by Occupy's participants. Occupy demonstrated that, in reality, direct democracy does not work like an ideal of a self-transparent and completely non-alienated form of decision-making; this is perhaps the most important lesson that has to be borne in mind when considering the question of whether it is inevitable that the lacks in the system and in subjects continually re-emerge, and when asking what this can mean for the potential of universalising direct democracy and the future of radical activism. This paper draws on ‘militant ethnographic’ and participatory action research within Occupy in Dublin and semi-structured interviews with participants from Ireland and the USA.     

"理论热"的消退与文学理论研究的出路

持续多年的“西方文论热”使国内人文学界实现了与20世纪60年代以后国际学术的接轨。至少取得三方面的收获:认识范式的转型、认识假设的改变和认识(批评)方法的更新。然而,随着这一理论热以及后来又时兴了一阵的文化研究热的消退,国内文论研究目前已陷入一个备受冷落的困境。在西方,“理论热”因自身的原因同样消退了,但理论界并不因此而寂寞,他们正在对过去20多年的“理论热”进行反思。我们的理论研究也应该进入一个更为成熟的阶段,应该摆脱别人提问、而我们跟在后面进行思考那样一个蹒跚学步的阶段。我们或可作出三个选择:返回经典,深化实践,该放手则放手。唯其如此,方可把我们的文论研究推向一个新的、更高的层次。