Multitude

"The ‘Arab spring’, the Spanish ‘Indignados’, the Greek ‘Aganaktismenoi’ and the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement all share a number of distinctive traits. They made extensive use of social networking and were committed to the direct democratic participation of all as they co-ordinated and conducted their actions. Leaderless and self-organised, they were socially and ideologically heterogeneous, dismissing fixed agendas or ideologies. Still, the assembled multitudes that animated these mobilisations often claimed to speak in the name of ‘the people’, and they aspired to empowered forms of egalitarian self-government in common.

Similar features have marked collective resistances from the Zapatistas and the Seattle protests onwards, giving rise to theoretical and practical debates over the importance of these ideological and political forms. By engaging with the controversy between the autonomous, biopolitical ‘multitude’ of Hardt and Negri and the arguments in favour of the hegemony of ‘the people’ advanced by J. Rancière, E. Laclau, C. Mouffe and S. Žižek the central aim of this book is to discuss these instances of collective mobilisation, to probe the innovative practices and ideas they have developed and to debate their potential to reinvigorate democracy whilst seeking something better than ‘disaster capitalism’.

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Contents: Introduction: radical democracy and collective movements today: responding to the challenges of kairos, Alexandros Kioupkiolis and Giorgos Katsambekis; Post-hegemony: politics outside the usual post-Marxist paradigm, Benjamin Arditi; Letter to a Greek anarchist: on multitudes, peoples, and new empires, Richard J.F. Day and Nick Montgomery; Sovereignty of the people, Jodi Dean; Occupy and autonomous political life, Saul Newman; Hegemony or post-hegemony? Discourse, representation and the revenge(s) of the real, Yannis Stavrakakis; Generalised antagonism and political ontology in the debate between Laclau and Negri, Paul Rekret; A hegemony of the multitude: muddling the lines, Alexandros Kioupkiolis; The multitudinous moment(s) of the people: democratic agency disrupting established binarisms, Giorgos Katsambekis; Representation and political space in Laclau and Hardt and Negri, Andy Knott; Autonomy and hegemony in the squares: the 2011 protests in Greece and Spain, Marina Prentoulis and Lasse Thomassen; Index.

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Reviews:

‘People or Multitude, Hegemony or Autonomy, Laclau or Negri? This is the crucial dilemma the “age of resistance” we have entered poses to theory and politics. This sophisticated volume brings together some of the most interesting younger scholars to examine the many aspects of the dilemma. The alternatives are mapped in their full complexity and are backed with detailed empirical evidence from the movements in Spain, Greece and Occupy. This collection will become a classic in radical political philosophy.’
--Costas Douzinas, Birkbeck, University of London, UK

‘At a time when we have to make sense of the worldwide protests unfolding since 2011 this book comes at exactly the right moment. Intervening into the heated debates around the question of political representation and the necessity of constructing a new left wing hegemony, this book is a must-read for everyone interested in the topic of collective protest.’
--Oliver Marchart, Düsseldorf Art Academy, Germany"

Za decyzją, by mówić o obrazach motłochu stała intuicja, że z jego
przedstawień wynikać może wiedza inna niż ta produkowana przez konstruowane na jego temat teorie. W lansowanych przez filozofie polityczne definicjach motłoch utożsamiany jest z anarchiczną i amorficzną masą, „osadem biernym fermentacji najniższych warstw starej społeczności” (Marks, Engels 1962), tłumem niezainteresowanym kwestią społecznego uznania, nieprodukującą żadnej wartości zbieraniną, jednym słowem –
ze społeczną negatywnością. Wgląd w motłochowe obrazy rozbija jednak te zaszufladkowania, ukazując bogactwo narracji i praktyk wytwarzanych przez żyjących na marginesach ludzi. Żebracze tragedie i opery, powieści łotrzykowskie, pirackie legendy, plebejskie podania czy ludowe teologie, jak ta wyobrażona przez wiejskiego młynarza, o którym pisze Carlo Ginzburg, albo opisana przez księdza Ściegiennego w Złotej książeczce, gdzie wolność i możliwość korzystania z „darów boskich” przysługują wszystkim ludziom, dopóki nie zostaną ograniczone przez niesprawiedliwe urządzenia społeczne – to tylko niektóre z niezliczonej liczby motłochowych narracji.