Protest and resistance

Wayne Vucinic Book Prize 2007, "for the most important contribution to Russian, Eurasian, and East European studies in any discipline of the humanities or social sciences." 

Endorsement by Slavoj Zizek:

"Alexei Yurchak's Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More immediately seduced me by its very title with a profound philosophical implication that eternity is a historical category--things can be eternal for some time. The same spirit of paradox runs through the entire book--it renders in wonderful details the gradual disintegration of the Soviet system from within its ideological and cultural space, making visible all the hypocrisy and misery of this process. I consider Yurchak's book by far the best work about the late epoch of the Soviet Union--it is not just history, but a pleasure to read, a true work of art." (Slavoj Zizek, author of In Defense of Lost Causes)

Abstract:

Soviet socialism was based on paradoxes that were revealed by the peculiar experience of its collapse. To the people who lived in that system the collapse seemed both completely unexpected and completely unsurprising. At the moment of collapse it suddenly became obvious that Soviet life had always seemed simultaneously eternal and stagnating, vigorous and ailing, bleak and full of promise. Although these characteristics may appear mutually exclusive, in fact they were mutually constitutive. This book explores the paradoxes of Soviet life during the period of "late socialism" (1960s-1980s) through the eyes of the last Soviet generation.

The massacre of almost 50 Maidan protesters on February 20, 2014 was a turning point in Ukrainian politics and a tipping point in the conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. This mass killing of the protesters and the mass shooting of the police that preceded it led to the overthrow of the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych and gave a start to a civil war in Donbas in Eastern Ukraine, Russian military intervention in Crimea and Donbas, and an international conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. A conclusion promoted by the post-Yanukovych governments and the media in Ukraine that the massacre was perpetrated by government snipers and special police units on a Yanukovych order has been nearly universally accepted by the Western governments, the media, and many scholars. The Ukrainian government investigation identified members of the special company of Berkut as responsible for killings of the absolute majority of the protesters, but did not release any evidence in support, with the exception of videos of the massacre.
              The question is which side organized the “snipers’ massacre.” This paper is the first academic study of this crucial case of the mass killing. It uses a theory of rational choice and a Weberian theory of instrumental rationality to examine actions of major actors both from the Yanukovych government, specifically various police and security forces, and the Maidan opposition, specifically its far right and oligarchic elements, during the massacre.
          The paper analyzes a large amount of evidence from different publicly available sources concerning this massacre and killings of specifics protesters. Qualitative content analysis includes the following data: about 1,500 videos and recordings of live internet and TV broadcasts from mass media and social media in different countries(some 150 gigabytes), news reports and social media posts by more than 100 journalists covering the massacre from Kyiv, some 5,000 photos, and nearly 30 gigabytes of publicly available radio intercepts of snipers and commanders from the special Alfa unit of the Security Service of Ukraine and Internal Troops, and Maidan massacre trial recordings. This study also employs field research on site of the massacre, eyewitness reports by both Maidan protesters and government special units commanders, statements by both former and current government officials, estimates of approximate ballistic trajectories, bullets and weapons used, and types of wounds among both protesters and the police. This study establishes a precise timeline for various events of the massacre, the locations of both the shooters and the government snipers, and the specific timeline and locations of nearly 50 protesters’ deaths. It also briefly analyzes other major cases of violence during and after the “Euromaidan.” This study includes two video appendixes.
            This academic investigation concludes that the massacre was a false flag operation, which was rationally planned and carried out with a goal of the overthrow of the government and seizure of power. It found various evidence of the involvement of an alliance of the far right organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland. Concealed shooters and spotters were located in at least 20 Maidan-controlled buildings or areas. The various evidence that the protesters were killed from these locations include some 70 testimonies, primarily by Maidan protesters, several videos of “snipers” targeting protesters from these buildings, comparisons of positions of the specific protesters at the time of their killing and their entry wounds, and bullet impact signs. The study uncovered various videos and photos of armed Maidan “snipers” and spotters in many of these buildings. The paper presents implications of these findings for understanding the nature of the change of the government in Ukraine, the civil war in Donbas, Russian military intervention in Crimea and Donbas, and an international conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine.

Harriet Jacobs’ slave narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl depicts the conditions of slavery of black women in antebellum America. Under the pseudonym of Linda Brent, Harriet Jacobs illustrates the constant struggles of enslaved black women through the portrayal of the black female body. Moreover, through the use of her limited, but powerful agency, and the practice of her own sexuality and motherhood, Linda Brent is able to subvert traditional notions of womanhood inherently built upon the Cult of True Womanhood, and eventually attain her ultimate objective: her emancipation and that of her children.

Brenda Hillman’s 2018 collection, ​Extra Hidden Life Among the Days​, is rich with many
lives—bacterial, human, arboreal, fungal. A multi-media, mycelial entanglement of elegies, personal photographs, and journal meditations, Hillman’s linguistic materials take the viewer from her family’s home in Tucson to the White House Lawn, weaving contemporary political struggles into her own observations of human-nature relationships, as well as the agency of forests and lichen. How might one describe Hillman’s work? To simply call it ‘ecopoetics’ does not do her experimental storytelling justice. Rather, we might better understand Hillman’s reconfiguration of Romantic, timeless environmental writing into a timely, expansive bio-cultural ecology as ‘political-pastoral,’ a type of poetic writing that embraces humanity’s impact on landscapes, that imbues the natural world with political symbolism.

This thesis examines the central driver of recent mobilizations to be the need felt by society to seek a reinterpretation of democracy. This need for change is seen to emerge due to the damages caused to the social fabric by the impact of economic globalization. It is argued that every social movement has its own particular reasons. However, in the current globalization era, everything is connected to each other and drivers of recent social movements are dependent on the ‘legitimation crisis’ of the political economy. This aspect is focused through a case study on the Gezi Park movement as part of the recent wave of social movements. While investigating these aspects, it appears necessary to go beyond the new social movement theory in order to observe accurately this even newer wave of mobilizations. These issues must be addressed, and if they would be, it is argued that recent social movements can be the pioneers of an honorable social and political system in the future.

Książka "Performans oporu" ma formę historii mówionej, czyli opiera się na osobistych przeżyciach i opiniach mówiących. To seria wywiadów o czasach PRL z wybitnymi polskimi artystami i aktywistami. Rozmowy te niejednokrotnie rzucają nowe światło na akcje przeprowadzane przed laty, problematyzują pojęcie performansu oporu oraz stawiają pytania o możliwości tworzenia sztuki zaangażowanej i sens radykalnych gestów w czasach PRL i dzisiaj.

Loadenthal, Michael. “Cells, Communiqués and Monikers: The Insurrectionary Networks of Anti-State Attack.” In Routledge Handbook of Radical Politics, edited by Uri Gordon and Ruth Kinna, 326–40. New York, NY: Routledge, 2019.

Abstract:
Spanning over a century, the insurrectionary spirit of anarchism has been on the forefront
of direct, unmediated attacks on the state and capital. Insurrectionary praxis is based on an ethic of informality, clandestinity and temporality, and as a result, its cells exist in secret only as long as deemed necessary for a particular action. Unlike social movement organisations and above-ground campaigns, the cells that populate the insurrectionary milieu are not something to ‘belong to’ but something to ‘act through’; a momentary assemblage of likeminded individuals united for a particular attack by voluntary association and through shared affinity.

While the modern cell networks gained visibly in Europe around the millennium,
their rapid replication has led to similarly styled formations in dozens of countries from the Americas to Asia. This franchised replication is aided by the use of adoptable monikers – static labels used to associate an attack with others, and to ideologically tag them as insurrectionary. Oftentimes, these are acronyms whose names communicate the politics of the attackers, such as the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), Conspiracy of Cells of Fire (CCF), International Revolutionary Front (IRF) as well as older, not explicitly insurrectionary monikers such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF). The use of moniker-linked attacks, which form into a campaign of sorts, is a distinctive feature of the insurrectionary cells. For example, in June 2013, a Greek of the FAI cell bombed a vehicle belonging to a prison director overseeing the incarceration of comrades. This attack marked ‘act one’ of the Phoenix Project, and would be followed by thirteen additional attacks, spanning eight countries out over a twelve-month period. The Phoenix Project highlights the strength of the adoptable moniker, as through its usage, an arson targeting an Indonesian hotel and the sabotage of Italian fuel pumps can be united into a shared, global effort, and not understood as disparate acts of lone wolves. This chapter will explore how the insurrectionary anarchist networks utilise the cell model, the communiqué and the adoptable moniker to allow for the creation of a globally dispersed, decentralised, open involvement movement united in its rejection of capitalism, the state and those who would seek to control it.

That author of this study draws attention to a case of resistance against the communist regime, which occurred in a Czech rural district almost 60 years ago. The work deals with peasants’ protest rally in front of the District National Committee building in Dobruška. In December 1949, local private farmers decided to respond to official inspections of their homesteads (which forced them to deliver disproportionately large amounts of produce within the framework of the Czechoslovak Communist Party’s agricultural policies) by organising a protest march to the District National Committee. A Czechoslovak national flag was raised at the head of the procession and around 300 people took part in the event. The state security authorities responded with the mass detention of selected farmers, whom it then portrayed as a group of subversives. This resulted in the political trial of 18 farmers, whom communist propaganda disparagingly described as the “village rich” or “kulaks.” The case was heard before the Prague State Court in Hradec Kralove. Prison sentences ranging from 13 to 25 years were given to six people who were identified as organisers, while sentences of 1 to 9 years were meted out to the others. Fourteen people had all their property confiscated while five were subsequently forced out of their homes as part of a nationwide security clampdown known as Operation K (“kulaks”). The study describes what motivated the farmers to resist and gives an account of what went on behind the scenes during the investigation. It also outlines how the treasonous group was fabricated and provides details of the hardships suffered by those who were convicted as well as the difficulties subsequently experienced in their district. The paper draws on documents from both central and regional archives.

Por meio da compreensão do ativismo de fãs como uma forma de resistência cotidiana cultural, econômica e criativa, o objetivo deste capítulo busca problematizar as relações entre participação, resistência e consumo de fãs do jogo on-line League of Legends (LoL). Enquanto suporte empírico, apresenta-se um mapeamento sobre algumas práticas do ativismo de fãs-jogadores no antigo fórum oficial de LoL no Brasil, a partir de uma triangulação metodológica com destaque para o uso de inspirações etnográficas. Após as reflexões teóricas e as análises, propõe-se uma tipologia das práticas de resistência cotidiana na comunidade de LoL baseada em quatro modos. Os resultados desta abordagem indicam que a diversidade do universo das produções digitais e práticas de parte dos fãs de LoL ressignificam as compreensões sobre resistência e participação, questionando a dualidade existente entre a cidadania e o consumo da cultura pop, agindo como catalizadores que reinterpretam e excedem os limites do fandom.

The Theses LVI belong to a series of hitherto unpublished early manuscripts of the Dutch humanist and jurisconsult Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) that were acquired by the University of Leiden in 1864. It is not certain when the Theses were written, but preliminary research on the physical manuscript and the sources cited indicate two possible windows. The first is around 1602-1605, that is roughly at a time when Grotius was also working on his Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty (De Iure Praedae Commentarius). The second dating places the genesis of the manuscrbipt around 1613-1615.
In the context of Grotius’ writings, the Theses LVI assume an important position for several reasons: They raise questions about state formation, the duty of citizens to the state and the right of political resistance in far greater detail than in any other work of the celebrated Dutch humanist. The Theses LVI also feature important reading notes that yield priceless insights into the sources that Grotius directly consulted and their influence on his ideas. The manuscript grants modern scholars a unique glimpse into the working mind of its author. Evidence points not only to the ferocious haste with which Grotius wrote his works, but also the occasional sloppiness of his reading and research habits."""

Political Protest Graffiti is an increasingly visible form of rhetoric that provides a democratizing space to enable its disenfranchised peoples to articulate their own narratives. As a form of visual activism, the George Floyd Protest Graffiti acts to historically document the tragic sentiment of the collective protest demonstration and testify to political and racial struggles in America. In this essay, I examine the George Floyd Protest Graffiti as a discursive site to analyze how emotions come into play in its production. With a rhetorical power to communicate ideas and influence public debate, I contend that the Floyd cultural graffiti production functions as a system of socio-cultural negotiations and a political call to arms to collapse structural racism in America.

Precies twee jaar na de mislukte coup tegen Erdoğan vaardigde het Turkse regime op 15 juli 2018 een decreet uit dat de autonomie van alle kunstenaars aan staatsinstellingen aan banden legt. Het is een zoveelste aanval tegen de vrije kunsten in Turkije, terwijl de politieke ruimte intussen één groot theater lijkt te worden. Wat staat er tussen de macht en het verzet op het spel?

In Op de vuist volgt Laurens Ham het spoor van het Nederlandstalige protestlied van de jaren zestig tot nu.

Wat verbindt de ontregelende acties van Provo uit 1966 en de boerenprotesten van vandaag? Wat heeft het kroningsoproer van 30 april 1980 gemeen met betogingen tegen racisme van dit moment? Precies: muziek. Sociale bewegingen gaan in Nederland al van oudsher hand in hand met protestliederen en strijdmuziek. Het waren ‘godfathers’ Boudewijn de Groot en Armand die het genre op de kaart zetten en die met Bots, Normaal, Doe Maar, Typhoon, Akwasi en vele anderen een bonte stoet aan navolgers hebben gekregen. Maar is het protestliedje van toen nog hetzelfde als dat van nu? Allerminst.

Het protestlied veranderde mee met verschuivingen in het politiek-maatschappelijke landschap, en daarmee maakte de roep om protest en solidariteit langzaamaan steeds meer plaats voor expressie van identiteit. Zo verdeeld als Nederland er heden ten dage bij staat, zo divers zijn ook de protestliedjes die je nu hoort op radio, tv, YouTube en Spotify.

While Saudi Arabia’s role as a counter-revolutionary force in the Middle East is widely understood and thoroughly documented, the counter-revolutionary role that Iran plays in the region’s politics has been largely overlooked. In this essay, I demonstrate how Iran’s roles in three key sites of popular mobilization and contestation — Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria — illuminate the Islamic Republic’s decidedly counter-revolutionary agenda amid the shifting fault lines in the politics of the Middle East. I argue that these developments call into question the image of Iran as a “revolutionary” state in the vanguard of a regional “Axis of Resistance” to US imperialism and its allies. I argue that it is time to dispense with such zombie-categories, which Ulrich Beck characterizes as ones that are “dead but somehow go on living”. I contend that the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, while regional rivals, should be seen as competing counter-revolutionary powers in the contemporary Middle East, and form what we might think of as a regional counter-revolutionary hydra.

Following his release from prison in 1986, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti released the album, Beast of No Nation to critical acclaim. The song came both as a scathing criticism of the Nigerian military regime at the time and in response to the event surrounding his detention and prison experience. Specifically composed in themes highlighting, among other things, the characteristic brutal nature of military rule, human rights abuses, undemocratic makeup of the United Nations and apartheid in South Africa, Fela used the song to expose political figures and institutions which for him represented tools of repression and oppression. While the narratives in the Beast of No Nation was framed to show Fela's own frustrations with the Nigerian state vis-à-vis his caustic impression of the state of affairs of the global community, this paper contends that a number of issues raised in the song were not reflective of the true account of what transpired at the time. This study, therefore, explores, among others, the historical context vis-à-vis political, national, international, and personal dimensions to the song. The primary energy of the study is to set some of the records straight by critiquing Fela's opinions in quoted interviews or on record, and the reality of what actually occurred, or statements other people made, and rarely interested in why he would sing such a song. The study, hence, contends that most of the themes in the song may not prove Fela wrong as to allow for speculation on his own artistic visions and pronouncements.

Esta investigación presenta la delincuencia como una expresión encubierta de malestar y conflicto en uno de los momentos de mayor tensión social de la España contemporánea, el primer tercio del siglo XX, en un distrito judicial agrario, el de Ciudad Real. Las causas judiciales contenidas en los Libros de Sentencias muestran una legalidad establecida en base a unas relaciones de desigualdad que se manifiestan en una constante: los infractores pertenecen a los sectores más desfavorecidos de la sociedad. Una amplia gama de delitos que se catalogan y analizan en torno a cuatro categorías conflictivas: el hurto, el engaño, la insubordinación y el uso de armas. En definitiva, unas acciones que en su mayoría desvelan las estrategias de supervivencia de las llamadas “clases subalternas”.

Telecommunications do not simply rearrange information and ideas in space, they also alter the balance of power in social struggles. Although it supports centralization of power and capital, subordinated groups can achieve certain goals by exploiting the existing telecommunication infrastructure. This tactic is geographical in that it refuses to accept the territorial boundaries fundamental to established systems of domination. Protest is therefore a politics of scale. Examination of these scale politics in China, the Philippines and the USA indicates that distant bystanders may or may not be of assistance to protesters, and that the media affect but do not determine the course of events. The protest in China does not yet appear to have succceeded; that in the Philippines did not solve long-term problems; while the US protest brought political but not economic power to a racial minority. Regardless of their success, these protests show new terrains of struggle not yet acknowledged by geography.

This paper considers the role of the informal economy in African economic development as and the political ramifications of informality in South Africa. SA has a unique history of an expanding informal economy dating back to labor relations during the apartheid era. Informality is often seen as a backward unintended consequence of poor economic policy, however it has expanded alongside economic development. This has implications for states pursuing economic development. First, I answer the following questions: in what ways has economic liberalization contributed to the expansion of the informal economy in SA? Has the expansion of the informal economy led to inclusion in the market or to adverse incorporation? The paper then establishes a conceptual framework of liberalization and/or economic development. I then analyze how colonial legacies helped shape an economic system that allowed for the informal economy to develop. These legacies have contributed to the expansion of informal labor. The second theme of the paper is concerned with the politics of informality that have developed as a result of the expansion of informality. Bayat (2000) argues that global economic restructuring has created a double process of global integration: countries are more globally economically integrated. Yet informalization has perpetuated social exclusion and marginalization. It is therefore relevant to explore the changing political organization and engagement of informal workers. I engage in a discussion of how this creates a “politics of informality”. Looking at various efforts of informal actors in SA to mobilize, I illustrate how informal actors have created subjectivities by creating a new terrain of political struggles. By understanding how the politics of informality are changing one can begin to understand the relationship between social/legal disempowerment and political mobilization, as well as the dynamics this creates – necessarily strengthening political voice in some cases and reinforcing exploitation in others.

This unpublished paper (20 pages, 6,400 words in the text + 45 footnotes) was presented in an abridged version as a lecture at the international conference 'The Nations of Europe Facing the Holocaust', Session V: West European Countries under Occupation (Moderator: Dr. Marcin Urynowicz). This paper includes references to the most recent relevant research literature on this topic.
The conference was organized by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), Historical Research Office, December 6–8, 2017, in Warsaw.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Prof. Andrzej Żbikowski, Prof. Antony Polonsky.

Due to (international) political controversy, which ignited shortly after conclusion of the conference, the collected articles will not be published in an edited volume.

Occupy Wall Street was a movement of many faces. Its impact on the public debate was significant, sparking support and criticism from a variety of sources. The occupation of the park, a ‘privately owned public space’, awoke the interest of the media, triggering nationwide media coverage and generating significant online activity.

Behind an almost two-month occupation of a 3,100 m2 park in downtown Manhattan, an element crucial to Occupy Wall Street gaining scale and achieving significant media coverage emerges: Its discourse. Acknowledging that a discourse encompasses a set of ideas, values, identities and activities signified by the use of certain semiotic choices, this paper explores how the different bits and pieces of the Occupy Wall Street discourse play out in the social, political and communication arenas. The methodology is based on empirical and exploratory research. Interviews are conducted with professors, activists, protesters, journalists and editors, most of them based in New York City. Meanwhile a media analysis is performed based on online activity, mainstream media coverage and tag clouds generated out of hundreds of articles from three leading newspapers of various types and political inclinations.

Results reveal a social movement represented by protesters whose one common aspect was their frustration with the economic, social and political systems in the United States. This responds to an ideology named “the critique of capitalism.” Despite lacking a single, unified message, Occupy Wall Street managed to deliver strong semiotic choices behind the narrative of “We are the 99 percent,” ultimately producing a compelling, media savvy discourse.

OWS also accomplished influencing the public conversation by relying on social media networks. This was reinforced by the very occupation of Zuccotti Park, which would symbolically reenact the movement’s narrative and serve as a storefront for journalists to gather constantly changing stories. In contrast, OWS’ depiction in the news varied considerably, showing a constantly shifting and volatile narrative particularly subject to events of a violent or unsettling nature. This generated increased media coverage, but ultimately affected both public support and the movement’s morale. Still, if there is one thing that Occupy Wall Street indisputably achieved, it is bringing back the public debate on the aggravating issue of economic inequality and its repercussions on the American people.

This article discusses the transformation of the Moroccan state under contemporary neoliberal globalization, and considers what this transition means for the ways in which scholars view state-society interplay in Morocco and the Arab world more generally. Specifically, it examines the protest of unemployed graduates in Morocco, suggesting that public demonstrations are not only a means to communicate and mobilize demands, but also a technology to reclaim and reproduce a particular “truth” in public. This truth does not necessarily equate with the reality of the neoliberal state as a dispersed material force. As such, by looking at the case of Morocco, we hope to instigate further debate on the nature of the state and its specific relation to phenomena as globalization, society and social protest.

This chapter is about the ethics of political dissent among disadvantaged black youth. Dissent that is “impure” contains valid political content but also includes other elements that diverge sharply from conventional or widely held normative standards. These “deviant” elements can sometimes seem to undermine or overshadow the political aims of the dissent or to call into question the political significance of such dissent. Marginalized black youth often participate in hip hop culture and are strongly associated with this culture in the public imagination. When black youth use hip hop to engage in impure dissent, this political participation is often dismissed as politically inconsequential or condemned as reactionary or worse. However, some of this music is an example of valuable public protest against injustice. This chapter explains the intrinsic value of impure dissent, that is, its value apart from any beneficial social consequences that may flow from it. It develops a non-instrumental argument in favor of impure dissent, showing that much political rap is best understood within a non-consequentialist political ethic. In publicly communicating condemnation of injustice, solidarity with the oppressed, and defiance in the face of illegitimate authority, impure dissent is a vital element of the political ethics of the oppressed.

Wie funktioniert das Selfie als Protestwerkzeug? Erzeugen Bildphänomene im Netz eine globale Community? An Protestbewegungen in aller Welt zeigt Kerstin Schankweiler, welche Dynamiken schnell verbreitete Bilder in Zeiten der Sozialen Medien entwickeln können.
Spätestens seit dem Arabischen Frühling im Jahr 2011 sind die Sozialen Medien als Orte politischen Protests wichtig geworden. Erfolgreiche Protestkampagnen bestehen aus geschickten Verknüpfungen zwischen dem öffentlichen Raum und den Räumen des Internet. Dabei spielen Bilder oft eine zentrale Rolle. Mit ihnen lassen sich Botschaften besonders prägnant und emotional formulieren und Geschehnisse scheinbar hautnah vermitteln. Bilder, die in den Sozialen Medien rasch verbreitet werden, können einer politischen Bewegung ungeahnte Dynamik verleihen. Sie verbinden Menschen für kurze oder längere Zeit zu Affektgemeinschaften.
Die Kunstwissenschaftlerin Kerstin Schankweiler analysiert an einer Vielzahl von Beispielen, welche Formen, Praktiken und Politiken von Bildprotesten es gibt und wie die Paradigmen der digitalen Kultur Protestbewegungen verändern.

REINVENTING THE LEFT. THE POLITICAL, CULTURAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL BASES OF PODEMOS.
With the worsening of the economic crisis, unemployment and social inequalities
in Europe, an analogy spreads between the economic and political crisis of the Thirties and
the current one. As in that period, it is argued, there is a risk that a systemic economic crisis
will lead to a general crisis of the political dimension and to authoritarian outcomes. Very
rarely it is envisaged that the crisis may have «progressive» outcomes. It is on this second
possible outcome of the interlacement between the political and the economic crisis that
this article focuses, analysing the Spanish case of Podemos. What is Podemos? Which are its
constitutive elements? How was it possible to build a party able to reach a wide consensus
(the 20%) in a very short time (two years)? Trying to reach a general definition of the main
features of this new party, the article investigates the elements at the basis of the emergence
of Podemos: its origin in the academia; the earlier creation of an autonomous web-Tv;
the role played by the Indignados movement; the theoretical foundations of this political
enterprise; its relationship with the left-wing Latin American governments.

« Le voeu d'obéissance a été émis pour vivre ''selon les Constitutions''. Si celles-ci deviennent lettre morte en matière importante, le voeu garde t-il sa rigueur pre-mière ? […] Souffrir en silence des désagrégations que l'on ressent vivement est assurément crucifiant et, en ce sens, ce pourrait être une vocation d'en accen-tuer l'épreuve ''usque ad mortem''. Mais si ces désagrégations apparaissent comme des infidélités, s'y résigner peut être aussi participer à un contre-témoi-gnage, tandis que s'en désolidariser peut être le seul témoignage qui demeure possible et qu'il faut avoir le courage de donner non en paroles mais en actes » (Lettre du père Henri Féret au père Nicolas Rettenbach).

Performances and performance cultures are often seen in our discipline as indicative of the political unconscious in the way they shape dramatizations of collective myths and identities. Yet they are also so much entangled with the present political agendas, the arts (and education) decrees and legislation, the support by local communities and audiences, and the general social and political climates in which they operate, respond to and aim to influence. In Turkey, for over a decade, politics and theatre are increasingly at odds with each other in a general climate that seeks to restrict freedom of speech and expression as well as the public representation and visibility of (political) identities that go beyond the homogeneity of an 'ethnically' Turkish nationhood and a (Sunni) Muslim denomination or cultural background. Moreover, right before the previous general elections and even more so after the failed coup attempt, the role of the state as a primary actor in identity politics has taken a nationalistic turn. Despite its ethnically diverse history and social reality, the homogeneous Turkish nation as predicated by the state leaves formally and publicly no space for cultural pluralism. Theatre and aesthetic protest take up an important social role in contesting mainstream notions of citizenship and in creating a space for plurality. In this keynote, I propose to do four things: 1. I will first focus on the current political climate in Turkey and look at its implications for the artist's response-ability (Lehmann 2006). 2. I will move on to reintroduce Turkey's protest culture after the Gezi uprisings and discuss how performativity in protest actions has the potential to be called a 'structure of feeling' (Williams 1977) with a wider history in political performance history. 3. I will unpack similarities and differences with protests and theatre cultures in the 1950s and 1980s. However, it must be said that my rereading of Turkey's history of aesthetic protest and the role of the artist within it will only reveal a very disparate story. 4. I will return to today's Turkey and pose some critical questions regarding the term ‘Gezi spirit’. I will conclude with the question whether or not the Gezi spirit is (or should be kept) alive and what it left us – as academics – to make sense of what is happening around us today.

This is the pre-print working paper version, see the full printed version: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_democracy/v025/25.3.onuch.html

The protests that began in Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv on 21 Novem- ber 2013 and became known as the EuroMaidan took even seasoned observers of East European politics by surprise. By December, around 800,000 “ordinary” Ukrainians were demonstrating in Kyiv and other cities across the country. The rapid rise of mass protests, especially at a time when the world’s established democracies are struggling with growing political apathy and declining voter turnout, appears as what Timur Kuran has called one of those moments “when out of never you have a revolution.”1 These episodes may help the cause of democ- racy, but they can also destabilize countries by polarizing citizens and boosting extremists. In order to gauge what a protest outbreak will mean for a country’s democratic prospects, it is crucial to understand who the bulk of the protesters are and what goals they hope to achieve. Here follows original survey data that may help to shed light on Euro- Maidan protest participation and its implications for democratic hopes in Ukraine.