Prefigurative Politics Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Benjamin Franks’ recent contribution to the ﬁeld of anarchist political philosophy, what he calls ‘preﬁgurative or practical anarchism’, is introduced partly in response to the critique of ‘meta-narratives’ made by writers such as Todd May and Saul Newman. Meta-narratives, they argue, are both, in theory, epistemologically suspect and, in practice, repressive of alternative conceptions of the good. This is because meta-narratives assert the validity of one goal or end for human society and/or individuals and one morally justiﬁable mode of acting to achieve this, thus risking the exclusion of other goals and forms of moral agency. Framing social and political action within meta-narratives of human nature is regarded by May and Newman, the founders of ‘postanarchist’ theory, as an essential characteristic of the classical anarchisms of the nineteenth century. While Franks, along with many others, is critical of the postanarchist attack on classical anarchisms, he nonetheless shares their rejection of meta-narratives and teleology. The practical anarchism he proposes aims to be sympathetic to this concern and does so by adopting and modifying the social practice theory found in the work of Alasdair MacInture. This may come as a surprise given MacIntyre’s position as one of the strongest contemporary defenders of the notion of a telos of human life (i.e., that human life has a natural and right end), but it is this exact feature that Franks’ account of social practices eliminates. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to assess the consequences of the rejection of meta-narratives and telos for Franks’ practical anarchism. Ultimately, I will show that without a teleological approach, practical anarchism collapses into moral relativism and weakens the deﬁnition of ‘anarchism’ to such an extent that it becomes useless.

- by
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- Philosophy, Ethics, Anarchism, Alasdair MacIntyre

In this chapter, we argue that there are three important micro cohorts--different social movement threads--of antiauthoritarian activists engaged in self-organization at the grassroots level in Quebec today: (1) radical feminists, (2) radical queers, and (3) feminists and profeminists organizing in antiracist and anticolonial groups and networks. Furthermore, these micro cohorts have played a role in developing radical analysis, strategy, and organizational modes in a variety of spaces inside, overlapping with, and external to the broader antiauthoritarian movement they/we are part of

- by Sandra Jeppesen and +2
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- Sociology, Social Movements, Queer Studies, Organizational Theory

En este capítulo de libro, los autores exponen a partir de 4 casos de estudio y trabajo de campo la forma en que se han configurado los centros sociales dentro de la Ciudad de México. Cuáles han sido los fundamentos ideológicos y los objetivos detrás de su creación y la integración, incluso su anulación, dentro del espacio urbano de una de las ciudades más importantes de Latinoamérica.

Recent work historicises and theoretically refines the concept of prefigurative politics. Yet disagreements over the question of whether or how it is politically effective remain. What roles does prefiguration play in strategies of transformation, and what implications does it have for understandings of strategy? The article begins to answer this question by tracking the concept’s use, from discussions of left strategy in the 1960s, a qualifier of new social movements in the 1980s-1990s, its application to protest events in the 2000s, to its contemporary proliferation of meanings. This contextualises reflections on the changing arguments about the roles of prefiguration in social movement strategy. Based on literature about strategy, three essential categories of applied movement strategy are identified: reproduction, mobilisation and coordination. Prefigurative dynamics are part of all three, showing that the reproduction of movements is strategically significant, while the coordination of movements can take various prefigurative forms.

- by Luke Yates
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- Social Movements, Direct Action, Prefigurative Politics

Este artigo parte do contexto dos movimentos sociais
contemporâneos e tem como objeto empírico uma rede informal
de ativistas jovens auto-referenciada como rolê feminista, cujas
relações são norteadas por ideário associado à autonomia, ao faça
você mesma e à horizontalidade. Tendo em vista as formas
recentes de politização do gênero e da sexualidade, o artigo busca
explorar os sentidos nativos atribuídos à autonomia. Assim,
olhando para os discursos e práticas ativistas, discuto a sua
materialização na prática da 'okupação' e seus desdobramentos –
como o 'escracho' – no espaço público. Para tal, dialogo
criticamente com a noção de “prefiguração”, apontando, à luz dos
dados etnográficos, potencialidades e lacunas. Por fim, chamo
atenção para a rentabilidade analítica de rolê frente aos limites da
categoria movimento social no período pós-anos 2000.

- by Íris Do Carmo
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- Social Movements, Feminist Theory, Feminism, Postcolonial Feminism
- by Jilly Traganou
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- Design, Participatory Design, Autonomy, Urban Design

This essay challenges the prevailing view among critical theorists that laughter's emancipatory power stems from its ability to speak the truth. The disparate accounts of laughter offered by Plato, Hobbes, and Nietzsche exemplify an alternative strategy for theorizing laughter as a performance of deception, or an experience that mystifies rather than enlightens. While a view of laughter as deceptive may at first appear to reduce laughter's critical leverage over ideology, I argue that this approach offers a stronger account of its emancipatory power. Speaking the truth does little more than reveal the falsity of ideology, and laughter's capacity to actually transform society hinges on how it deceives differently-namely, in such a way that prompts the imagination and construction of more democratic institutions and modes of relating. The essay concludes by considering the implications of this argument for how we understand the role of truth in critical theory today.

- by Patrick T Giamario
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- Critical Theory, Plato, Comedy, Democratic Theory
- by Jilly Traganou
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- Visual Studies, Design, Politics, Protest Movements

Panel presentation at the Prague Prefiguration Conference, Friday, October 22, 2021

- by John Clark
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- Social Change, Social Theory, Political Philosophy, Social Sciences

This article compares lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) 'activist-humanitarianism' in Beirut and Athens. In both locations, 'out' or 'outed' refugees endure a unique combination of structural and physical violence. In response, LGBT activists and their allies have established grassroots aid and solidarity networks. In Beirut, we examine an LGBT-advocacy non-governmental organization (NGO) that offers legal aid and training to LGBT refugees and Lebanese citizens. In Athens, we consider two self-organized horizontalist support groups. From a comparative ethnographic perspective, we explore how each sought to improve the wellbeing of LGBT refugees. We conclude that, while the structural limitations of 'neoliberalism' and 'NGO-ization' frustrated the emergence of a fully alternative activist-orientated humanitarianism, the groups nonetheless produced significant but 'unintended' impacts on refugee lives. Even if our informants felt much of the organizations' activities and training sessions were ineffective, they nonetheless harnessed marginal aspects of the projects, such as the provision of space for collective organizing. Through appropriating these spaces for their own means, they went on to build practical solidarity and develop a political critique of their predicaments as refugees.

- by Philip Proudfoot and +1
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- Queer Studies, Humanitarianism, Refugee Studies, Queer Theory

Lies and disinformation have always existed throughout human history. However, disinformation has become a “pandemic within a pandemic” with convergence of COVID-19 and digital transformation of health care, climate emergency, and pervasive human–computer interaction in all facets of life. We are living through an era of post-truth. New approaches to fight disinformation are urgently needed and of paramount importance for systems science and planetary health. In this study, we discuss the ways in which extractive and entrenched epistemologies such as technocracy and neoliberalism co-produce disinformation. We draw from the works of David Collingridge in technology entrenchment and the literature on digital health, international affairs, climate emergency, degrowth, and decolonializing methodologies. We expand the vocabulary on and interventions against disinformation, and propose the following: (1) rapid epistemic disobedience as a critical governance tool to resist the cultural hegemony of neoliberalism and its master narrative infinite growth that is damaging the planetary ecosystems, while creating echo chambers overflowing with disinformation, and (2) a two-tiered taxonomy of reflexivity, a state of self-cognizance by knowledge actors, for example, scientists, engineers, and physicians (type 1 reflexivity), as well as by chroniclers of former actors, for example, civil society organizations, journalists, social sciences, and humanities scholars (type 2 reflexivity). This article takes seriously the role of master narratives in quotidian life in production of disinformation and ecological breakdown. The infinite growth narrative does not ask critical questions such as “growth in what, at what costs to society and environment?,” and is a dangerous game of brinkmanship that has been testing the planetary ecological boundaries and putting at risk the veracity of knowledge. There is a need for scholars and systems scientists who break ranks with entrenched narratives that pose existential threats to planetary sustainability and are harmful to knowledge veracity. Scholars who resist the obvious recklessness and juggernaut of the pursuit of neoliberal infinite growth would be rooting for living responsibly and in solidarity on a planet with finite resources. The interventions proposed in this study, rapid epistemic disobedience and the expanded reflexivity taxonomy, can advance progressive policies for a good life for all within planetary boundaries, and decolonize knowledge from disinformation in ways that are necessarily upstream, radical, rapid, and emancipatory.

- by Simon Springer and +1
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- Critical Theory, Epistemology, Climate Change, Health Geography

Radical geographers have been preoccupied with Marxism for four decades, largely ignoring an earlier anarchist tradition that thrived a century before radical geography was claimed as Marxist in the 1970s. When anarchism is considered, it is misused as a synonym for violence or derided as a utopian project. Yet it is incorrect to assume anarchism as a 'project', which instead reflects Marxian thought. Anarchism is more appropriately considered a protean process that perpetually unfolds through the insurrectionary geographies of the everyday and the prefigurative politics of direct action, mutual aid, and voluntary association. Unlike Marxism’s stages of history and revolutionary imperative, which imply an end-state, anarchism appreciates the dynamism of the social world. In staking a renewed anarchist claim for radical geography, I attend to the divisions between Marxism and anarchism as two alternative socialisms, wherein the former positions equality alongside an ongoing flirtation with authoritarianism while the latter maximizes egalitarianism and individual liberty by considering them as mutually reinforcing. Radical geographers would do well to reengage anarchism as there is a vitality to this philosophy that is missing from Marxian analyses that continue to rehash ideas–such as vanguardism and a proletarian dictatorship–that are long past their expiration date.

- by Simon Springer
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- Critical Theory, History, European History, Economic History

Pedagogy is central to geographical knowledge, where Kropotkin’s ‘What Geography Ought to Be’ has significantly shaped the face of contemporary geographical thought. At the same time, anarchists have developed very different political imaginations than Marxists, where the importance of pedagogy has always been of primary importance. Pedagogy accordingly represents one of the key sites of contact where anarchist geographies can continue to inform and revitalize contemporary geographical thought. Anarchists have long been committed to bottom-up, ‘organic’ transformations of societies, subjectivities, and modes of organizing. For anarchists the importance of direct action and prefigurative politics have always taken precedence over concerns about the state, a focus that stems back to Max Stirner’s notion of insurrection in 'The Ego and Its Own' as walking one’s own way, ‘rising up’ above government, religion, and other hierarchies, not necessarily to overthrow them, but to simply disregard these structures by taking control of one’s own individual life and creating alternatives on the ground. Thus, the relevance of pedagogy to anarchist praxis (understood in a broad sense, as in Paulo Freire’s 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed') stems from its ability to guide a new way of thinking about the world and as a space that is able to foster transgression.

- by Simon Springer and +1
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- Critical Theory, Sociology, Political Sociology, Social Movements

The work of Deleuze and Guattari has much to offer contemporary radical thought. Here I discuss an aspect often mentioned, but rarely explored to the extent I think it deserves, namely the importance of micropolitics for emancipatory social change. To do this, I clarify what the ‘micropolitical’ is for Deleuze and Guattari and why they think it is important for revolutionary practise. I argue that micropolitics is important for thinking about (1) developing revolutionary subjectivity and (2) developing connections between different organisations and movements that strengthen each other and feed into macropolitical change. I also discuss Deleuze and Guattari’s critique of vanguardist approaches to revolutionary organisation and consider some objections to Deleuze and Guattari’s emphasis on the micropolitical.

- by Paul Raekstad
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- Social Change, Political Philosophy, Political Theory, Anarchism

If anarchism is a spirit, it is the spirit of revolt. For those unfamiliar with the actual content of anarchism or the enabling possibilities of revolt this statement might appear doubly negative. Just as so much of the contemporary discourse surrounding anarchism is framed by derision and a seemingly wilful confusion of what the idea represents, so too has the idea of revolt been read though an unfavourable lens. What happens when we shatter that lens, thus allowing the light of revolt to refract in new ways that illuminate a path toward freedom? We want to create freedom in our lives, to bring the poetic joy of being in the world to each moment of breath, and to fill the spaces of our existence with a deep and unshakable love for the mystery known as ‘life’. To do this requires us to revolt. To bring light we must pursue a trajectory that refuses the darkness, death, and dismay of the age we live in. The challenges of our time require us to rebel against the disabling faith in the idea that oppression, hierarchy, and captivity are somehow the natural consequences of human evolution. Our revolt is our emancipation. It is the aperture through which the light of freedom passes, revealing a full spectrum of colour, wonder, and imagination. Yet this sentiment of revolt should not be conceived as a transcendental moment, as it is much more accurate to envision revolution as a politics of the everyday, a product of immanence. Accordingly, because our lives are lived in the here of this space and the now of this moment, it is only in the ongoing enactment of our actual daily performances that freedom itself is called into being. But these ordinary routines can’t be any presentation, for performances are multiple and they can just as often be cruel as they can be compassionate. To pursue revolt then is to practice freedom, and it is our contention that to practice freedom is to perform anarchism.

- by Simon Springer
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- Critical Theory, History, Cultural History, Economic History

An exploration is presented of how education policy and practice may be used to transform society. Specifically, connections are made between Paulo Freire's teaching strategies and radically democratic organizing. The connections are contextualized within the prefigurative tradition, which explores how the democratic process is central to consistent and sustainable social change. The article contributes to an understanding of Paulo Freire's ontology, and the philosophy of social change, as well as how democratic strategies may address failures of revolutionary movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.

- by Timothy D Bolin
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- Paulo Freire, Social Justice, Democracy, Educational reform

Chapter in Post-Dance, Edited by Danjel Andersson, Mette Edvarsdsen and Mårten Spångberg. MDT, 2017. ISBN 978-91-983891-0-4. Based on materials from the workshop ‘Nor Culture Nor Art’, with Mårten Spångberg and Vanessa Ohlraum, at Learning Plays. A School of School, Impulse Theatre Festival in collaboration with Ringlokschuppen Ruhr. Mülheim/Ruhr, 18–25 June, 2016. A previous version of the article first appeared in F. Malzacher, L. Mestre and E. Van Campenhout (Eds.), Turn Turtle, Turn! Performing Urgency #2, House on Fire Publications, 2016.

- by Valeria Graziano
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- Performance Studies, Political Art, Art Theory and Politics, Art and Politics

Political realism is characterised by fidelity to the facts of politics and a refusal to derive political judgments from pre- political moral commitments. Even when they are not taken to make normative theorising impossible or futile, those characteristics are often thought to engender a conservative slant, or at least a tendency to prefer incremental reformism to radicalism. I resist those claims by distinguishing between three variants of realism—ordorealism, contextual realism, and radical realism—and contrasting them with both non-ideal theory and utopianism. I then develop a version of radical realism as a form of debunking and vindicatory genealogy. Even though this new approach eschews both feasibility constraints (unlike non-ideal theory) and prescriptions about the ideal society (unlike utopianism), I show how it has more radical potential than morality-driven (and hence often ideological) political theory, and how it supports both open-ended, radical social critique and concrete forms of prefigurative political action.

- by Enzo Rossi
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- Ideology, Political Realism, Feasibility, Ideal and Non-Ideal Theory
- by Bill Carroll
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- Social Movements, Hegemony, Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony, Prefigurative Politics

Contemporary geographical thought is constrained by a political economic imagination rooted in binarism, which is exemplified in debates surrounding neoliberalism. Neoliberal proponents call for decentralization and increased capital flows, while Marxists respond by pairing centralization with capitalism’s abrogation. The latter view considers hierarchy necessary, a position that promotes authority and regards horizontal politics as propitious to neoliberalism. Anarchism’s coupling of decentralization with anti-capitalism is dismissed because Marxism cannot accommodate the processuality of prefigurative politics. Marxism demands a revolution with a masterplan, considering horizontality a future objective. Such a temporality ignores the insurrectionary possibilities of the present and implies a politics of waiting. The spatial implications of centralized hierarchy are also questionable, employing a vertical ontology, wherein horizontal organization is deemed inappropriate when ‘jumping scales’. Yet scale represents both a theoretical dis-traction from grounded everyday particularities and a ‘master-signifier’ by providing a point de capiton, or anchoring point, that rests on the exclusion of unconsciousness–the knowledge that is not known¬. Thus the point de capiton is the (Archimedean) point at which an essentialist illusion of fixed meaning is created, as scale is unconscious of geography’s ‘hidden enfolded immensities’. The discourse of scale accordingly dismisses the openness of rhizomic politics by predetermining the political as an arborescent register. Yet the inevitable terra incognita that scalar hierarchies produce becomes a powerful resource for the oppressed, which is why anarchist direct action often proceeds outside of authority’s view. A flat ontology has significant resonance with anarchism, imparting that politics should operate horizontally rather than vertically. This ontological shift suggests that we need not wait for the emergence of a ‘greater’ class-consciousness, as one can immediately disengage capitalism by reorienting economic landscapes in alternative ways. Consequently, a human geography without hierarchy gains significant traction when we reject scale and embrace an anarchist flat ontology.

- by Simon Springer
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- Critical Theory, Discourse Analysis, Semiotics, History
- by Frederick Harry Pitts and +1
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- Critical Theory, Sociology, Political Sociology, Social Movements

The goal of this article is twofold. First, to illustrate how in the last decade a growing number of critical and Marxist thinkers committed to discussing and developing theories of change have started to broaden their focus by including social movements and grassroots initiatives that are " interstitial " , i.e. initiatives that are developing within capitalism and are striving to prefigure a post-capitalist society in the here and now without engaging in contentious, violent and revolutionary actions and activities. To achieve this, I mainly focus on the work of four authors: Erik Olin Wright, John Holloway, Ana C. Dinerstein, and Luke Martell. The second goal of this article is to understand why these interstitial movements are getting so much attention from critical scholars and to argue that the time is ripe for establishing a theory of (and for) prefigurative social movements. The article closes with some brief reflections on the future of radical thinking that includes an invitation, directed mostly at the young generation of critical and Marxist scholars, to begin a dialogue with theories of change developed within other disciplines , to engage with activists, and to experiment with participatory methods and techniques.

- by Lara Monticelli
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- Political Sociology, Social Movements, Social Theory, Marxism

This article is a manifesto for anarchist geographies, which are understood as kaleidoscopic spatialities that allow for multiple, non-hierarchical, and protean connections between autonomous entities, wherein solidarities, bonds, and affinities are voluntarily assembled in opposition to and free from the presence of sovereign violence, predetermined norms, and assigned categories of belonging. In its rejection of such multivariate apparatuses of domination, this article is a proverbial call to nonviolent arms for those geographers and non-geographers alike who seek to put an end to the seemingly endless series of tragedies, misfortunes, and catastrophes that characterize the miasma and malevolence of the current neoliberal moment. But this is not simply a demand for the end of neoliberalism and its replacement with a more moderate and humane version of capitalism, nor does it merely insist upon a more egalitarian version of the state. It is instead the resurrection of a prosecution within geography that dates back to the discipline’s earliest days: anarchism!

- by Simon Springer
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- Critical Theory, Discourse Analysis, History, Economic History

- by Simon Springer
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- Critical Theory, Discourse Analysis, History, Economic History

Responding to the set of dialogues on my original article, ‘Why a radical geography must be anarchist’, I throw my hat back in the ring and offer a blow-by-blow commentary on the sucker punches and low blows that some Marxists continue to want to throw at anarchism. In particular, I go toe to toe with the fallacious idea that Marxism remains the only viable politics on the left and demonstrate why anarchism is not only up to scratch, but in a world that continues to be marked by domination, as far as emancipation is concerned, anarchism is a heavyweight contender. While I pull no punches with the two Marxist pugilists, the remaining commentators are in my corner, and I welcome their thoughtful critiques by taking it on the chin. Yet rather than throw in the towel, I attempt to set the record straight by repositioning anarchism as an ethos that merges rebellion with reciprocity, subversion with self-management, and dissent with direct action, where the potential combinations are infinite. Anarchism is to be thought of, quite simply, as an attitude. When we remember this quality, without attempting to pin anarchism down to a particular set of commitments or distinct group of activities, we begin to recognize that anarchism can both float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. The reason for this multifarious character is because anarchism is not an identity, but is instead something you do. Anarchism consequently has knockout potential to unite diverse strategies and tactics under the black flag of this radical political slogan. Insofar as the future of radical geography is concerned, anarchism has got the guts, the spirit, and the heart to go the distance. Let’s get ready to rumble!

- by Simon Springer
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- Critical Theory, History, Sociology, Political Sociology

How can societies maximize equal liberty in the context of the modern sovereign state? While liberal democracy is widely recognized as the type of political regime most conducive to this goal, it fails to offer a vision of life beyond state power and lacks sufficient safeguards against socioeconomic inequality. Meanwhile, the traditional anarchist tendency to downplay differences across political regime types has coincided with a commitment to the prefigurative strategic principle that state power cannot be used as a means to the anarchist end. In turn, it will be argued that strict adherence to prefiguration weakens the impact of anarchism, for instance by increasing the risk of bad anarchy. Gradualist anarchism provides a corrective to these issues, but encounters the challenge of bad government traditionally emphasized by anarchists.

- by Brian Williams
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- Comparative Politics, Anarchism, History of Anarchism, Political Institutions

This chapter describes and clarify the term “prefiguration”, demonstrating its conceptual centrality and pervasiveness to the main forms of anarchism. It explores some criticisms raised by contemporary theorists that prefiguration is conceptually inadequate as it is vague enough as a guiding principle to allow for hierarchical and oppressive activity and it is unclear as to whether it applies to types of organisation or tactic or epistemology. Prefiguration will also be defended from orthodox Marxist and post-anarchist critics who argue that prefiguration is inadequate or detrimental to a genuinely revolutionary (anti-)politics.

- by Benjamin Franks
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- Ethics, Anarchism, Post-Anarchism, Michael Freeden

This book analyses the aesthetic and utopian dimensions of various activist social movements in Western Europe since 1989. Through a series of case studies, it demonstrates how dreams of a better society have manifested themselves in contexts of political confrontation, and how artistic forms have provided a language to express the collective desire for social change.
The study begins with the 1993 occupation of Claremont Road in east London, an attempt to prevent the demolition of homes to make room for a new motorway. In a squatted row of houses, all available space was transformed and filled with elements that were both aesthetic and defensive – so when the authorities arrived to evict the protestors, sculptures were turned into barricades. At the end of the decade, this kind of performative celebration merged with the practices of the antiglobalisation movement, where activists staged spectacular parallel events alongside the global elite’s international meetings. As this book shows, social movements try to erase the distance that separates reality and political desire, turning ordinary people into creators of utopias. Squatted houses, carnivalesque street parties, counter-summits, and camps in central squares, all create a physical place of these utopian visions

- by Julia Ramírez-Blanco
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- Social Movements, Visual Studies, Art History, Performing Arts

In Italy as much as in the People’s Republic, an exclusive attention to elite-led attempts to control unintended environmental consequences has suppressed alternative discourses in natural resource management. This may have catastrophic consequences for the prospects of imaging our way out of the global environmental crisis. However, at the grassroots there is no lack of alternatives. For instance, along the long history of China, as well as in its contemporary rural countryside, there are places where water was, and still is, managed as a commons.

- by Andrea E . Pia
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- Anthropology, Chinese Studies, Water, Commons

Anarchist criminology has produced a strong critique of the system of criminal law, but has only recently started to theorize practical alternatives. The alternatives that it offers have been largely rooted in pacifism through the practice of restorative justice and deescalation of conflict. These models are generally effective so long as the individuals involved are committed to the process being applied. Ethnographic study of the anti-fascist movement in the United States demonstrates a potential model of anarchist response to threats of community and public safety in prefigurative subcultural spaces. The confrontational and violent tactics employed by militant anti-fascists serve as a form of policing based on anarchist principles of spontaneity, direct democracy, and direct action; and can serve as a starting point for theorizing proactive anarchist actions against individuals who threaten public safety and order.

- by Stanislav Vysotsky
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- Sociology, Criminology, Social Movements, Social Sciences
- by SD Chrostowska
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- Critical Theory, Utopian Studies, Surrealism, Necropolitics

The literature on prefigurative politics currently suffers from an organizational bias. To reduce this bias, I demonstrate how the personal sphere can be prefigurative. An analysis of woman’s temperance and woman’s suffrage newspaper articles about cooking reveals that these activists advocated cooking in ways that would prefigure their visions of social change within individual families. Therefore, this article broadens the concept of prefigurative politics beyond organizations, expanding it to the home. I demonstrate that the home is a site of social movement action, where women in particular may campaign for social change.

Only one year after the global wave of protest movements and revolts— starting with the 'Arab Spring', then, subsequently, the Indignados movement and Occupy-our appreciation of such movements turned sour. The aim of this contribution is to question the predominantly sceptical and defeatist discourse on these movements. One element central to many defeatist discourses on the 2011 movements , is the way in which a lack of demonstrable 'outcomes' or 'successes' is retrospectively ascribed to them. Therefore, an alternative approach should be formulated, which would allow us to recognise the significant or valuable aspects of these movements and their practices, without downplaying them as 'unsuccessful' or 'failures' altogether. Pierre Rosanvallon's concept of 'counter-democracy' and Hardt and Negri's perspective of a 'Multitude' will be evaluated as alternative approaches to current political movements. Although they are meritorious, both perspectives do not go far enough and need further articulation. The notion of 'prefiguration', originally derived from contemporary anarchist discourse, could be beneficial to this endeavour. After defining and deepening this concept from an anarchist perspective, it will be applied to one particular context: the occupation of Tahrir Square in Cairo, during the 2011 revolution in Egypt. As will be concluded, in its application this concept of 'prefiguration' could teach us more about the recent wave of protest movements in general, and could help us to formulate a different approach to such movements.

Anarchism is a perennially misunderstood idea. Far from representing violence and chaos, anarchism is instead a form of praxis that centers on non-hierarchical organization and the practice of mutual aid, implemented through the everyday politics of direct action, voluntary association, and self-management. Although often misrepresented as an ideology solely concerned with the destruction of the state, the power of anarchist geographies resides in their integrality, which refuses to assign priority to any one of the multiple dominating apparatuses that constrain our lives, as all are seen as irreducible to one another. Anarchism is the struggle against all forms of oppression and exploitation, a protean and multivariate process that is decidedly geographical.

- by Simon Springer
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- Geography, Human Geography, Radical Geography, Anarchism

Theories and concepts for understanding the political logic of social movements' everyday activities, particularly those which relate directly to political goals, have been increasingly important since the late 1970s. The notion of ‘prefigurative politics’ is becoming established in this debate and refers to scenarios where protesters express the political ‘ends’ of their actions through their ‘means’, or where they create experimental or ‘alternative’ social arrangements or institutions. Both meanings share the idea that prefiguration anticipates or partially actualises goals sought by movements. This article uses narratives and observations gathered in social movement ‘free spaces’, autonomous social centres in Barcelona, to evaluate, critique and rearticulate the concept. Participants' attention to the ‘means’ through which protest is carried out and emphasis on projects such as experimentation with alternative social and organisational forms suggest they engage in prefigurative politics. However, the article uses these examples to dispute the key ways through which prefiguration has been defined, arguing that it can better be deployed in referring to the relations, and tensions, between a set of political priorities. Understood as such, prefigurative politics combines five processes: collective experimentation, the imagining, production and circulation of political meanings, the creating of new and future-oriented social norms or ‘conduct’, their consolidation in movement infrastructure, and the diffusion and contamination of ideas, messages and goals to wider networks and constituencies.

- by Luke Yates
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- Social Movements, Urban Politics, Anarchism, Identity politics

The literature of social movement outcomes is engaged with the study of social change. However, social movement theories limit the explanatory potential of social movements' political outcomes, only in relation to policy and institutional change. Therefore, they do not pay attention to the various political qualities which emerge from protest cycles and move away from institutional arrangements. Against this backdrop, the paper suggests approaching social transformations as changes in boundaries. Boundaries define, each time, the limits of social settings and describe organizational and identarian aspirations of social change in daily life. Periods of crises are characterized by intense transformations, which overcome the old and create new boundaries. Based on qualitative field research conducted in more than 50 social movement organizations in Greece, between 2016 and 2017, the paper analyses the mechanisms that facilitated the enlargement of social movements' cognitive and structural boundaries, towards service-oriented repertoires of action. By studying social movement outcomes through boundary transformations, the paper challenges the rigid categorizations of movement outcomes and unravels the interactions among their personal, cultural and political aspects. As such, it demonstrates the need for social movement theories to consider noninstitutional political changes of daily life, within the study of movement outcomes.

- by Haris Malamidis
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- Social Movements, Greece, Economic Crisis, Prefigurative Politics

The subject of this conference paper is the politics of the production, dissemination and consumption of music in the Palestinian underground music scene. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on grassroots cultural movements in Palestine, specifically Ramallah and Haifa (which is a part of Israel but is home to a large population of Palestinians). My intention is to document and amplify the narratives of the Palestinians involved in the network of Ramallah and Haifa underground music scenes, who I interviewed as part of multiple online semistructured interviews conducted between June and August 2019. I connect my findings to the existing literature of politics of the dance floor and attempt to combine what is currently a western-dominated field with original research from Palestine in order to develop a Palestinian perspective of the politics of music. I am looking at the potential of Palestine's music scenes to provide spaces of cultural and social expressions and to assess their political influence. Since I am further focussing on the characteristics of such spaces in reference to the concept of an underground music scene, I compare the theoretical understanding of counterculture and underground with the realities of the scenes in Ramallah and Haifa and identify potential constraints hindering their development into commercial music industries. Ultimately, I demonstrate how involvement in a local, non-commercially driven music scene can empower individuals to create communities and regain autonomy over their lives in a reality overpowered by oppression by Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and tradition.

- by SD Chrostowska
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- Social Movements, Utopian Studies, Anarchism, Utopian Literature

The rationale for social movement tactical choices is rarely discussed in social science literature. This article presents the impact of perceived threat from a countermovement on the rationale of militant anti-fascist activists for their tactical choices. Threat is described as physical, political, and spatial. Physical
threat involves the fear of violent attacks by opponents, political threat involves the fear of being politically undermined by the activity of its opponents, and spatial threat refers to fear of losing literal and metaphorical subcultural space to opponents. Militant anti-fascists reported facing physical threats, political threats, and spatial threats from white supremacists who operated in similar
subcultures and have frequent contact.

- by Stanislav Vysotsky
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- Social Movements, Violence, Subcultures, Resistance (Social)