Insurgencies and Assemblies: Towards a Politics of the Street

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Protests, demonstrations, rallies, riots—from Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park, collective mobilizations have been some of the most striking and significant political phenomena of recent decades. Though these forms of politics have captured public attention across the globe, political theory provides limited resources for understanding the normative place such gatherings occupy in the political world. This panel aims to develop an array of critical concepts to understand such insurgent movements as a distinct modality of politics. We thematize the material, collective, and public qualities of public gathering that distinguish it from other forms of political action, as well as the possibilities, tensions, and challenges in conceiving assembly as site of resistance. From a variety of perspectives, cultures, and archives, we seek a better understanding of the unique character of this politics of the street.

Sub Unit

• Division 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Individual Presentations

• Towards a Feminist Political Epistemology of the City - Sina Jo Kramer, Loyola Marymount University

• Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly - Stacey Liou, University of Florida

• Liberal Revolution and Its Subaltern Other - Kevin Olson, University of California, Irvine

• Rethinking Afrophobia: Black Americans in the 1960s Anti-Apartheid Struggle - Tiffany J. Willoughby-Herard, University of California-Irvine

Chair

• Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson Syracuse University

Discussant

• Yasmeen Daifallah University of California, Santa Cruz