Postfigurative Politics: How the Past Helps Change the Future

• In Event: 297 - Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Varieties of Social Movements

Abstract

During the Great Depression, an organization called the Farmers Holiday Association helped stop a catastrophic wave of foreclosures across the Midwest by delaying or fixing public auctions of foreclosed farms. The standard view of these actions assumes that farmers were acting instrumentally. I offer an alternative analysis: these farmers fused the expression of their agrarian community identity with the strategic instrumentality of their actions. This fusion is commonly associated with prefigurative politics. Prefigurative movements experiment with new understandings of social relations, putting ideals into practice as exemplars of a new social order. They challenge their contemporary social order through the expression of an identity in a future order based on shared ideals. The Depression era farmers expand the concept in two ways. While the farmers seem to fit the prefigurative model, they are not the standard revolutionary, radically egalitarian social movement that the prefigurative literature almost exclusively focuses on. Second, the farmers’ values and inspiration do not come from the future, but from the past. For this reason, I propose a reactionary companion to prefigurative politics: postfigurative politics. Postfigurative movements rely on old understandings of social relations, putting values into practice as idealized illustrations of an old social order. They challenge their contemporary social order through the expression of an identity in an idealized past based on shared ideals. Holiday protesters wanted to reform the economic system along ideals from their agricultural community heritage, and used the expression of these very ideals to fight for change.

Author

• Daniel Jaster, University of Texas