Self-Organisation as Liberation

• In Event: Infrastructures of Liberation I: Resistance, Reconstruction, and De-Occupation in the Ukrainian Commons

Abstract

The predominance of self-organization as a framework for political action in Ukraine took its current form during the 2013-2014 Euromaidan protests, but its roots in the struggle for Ukraine’s national liberation can be discovered throughout history. Drawing from ethnographic research during the Euromaidan protests and the response to mass forced displacement in the protests’ aftermath, as well as from Ukrainian Soviet dissident authors writing with the lens of (de)colonization, this paper explores self-organization as a liberatory mechanism for Ukrainians because of its fluid political power that makes engagement possible far outside the limits of institutionally-defined politics.

Author

• Emily S. Channell-Justice, Harvard U