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Protest: The Aesthetics of Resistance
448 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2018
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May 31, 2022
“For a society, protest is […] constitutive. It functions as a driving force that keeps social structures versatile, and at the same time constantly advances fresh negotiation of agreements and compromises, of new allocations or redistributions of rights and privileges.” (p 38)
*
“Under the labels of pluralization and individualization, there is an increasing fragmentation of societies, while at the same time they are more intensively networked together. The resulting heterogeneity and polyphony within contemporary society and its sub-societies lead to unrest and insecurity. If everyone is permanently a part of the pattern of inclusions and exclusions, if everyone is fundamentally involved and fundamentally marginalized, then everyone is constantly protesting for against something, and they are part of society that is being protested.” (p 40-41)
*
“When I protest, I show myself, I put myself and my ego on display and refer to others. In doing so, I enter into a series of relations with my viewers, my audience. […] All of a sudden, it not only feels sensible to protest, it feels real good.” (p 339; 336)
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Published to mark the passage of the half a century since the magical year of 1968, the collection of articles explores the protest as an aesthetic phenomenon.
Editors have found a way to manage this gargantuan topic by dividing the volume into three conceptual blocks: Images-Signs, Voices-Tongues, Bodies-Spaces. Included essays and interviews act as rather quick phenomenological glimpses: the subcultural history of bomber-jacket; the resemblance of press photos about BLM protests and Hollywood iconography; the post-revolutionary loneliness of veterans of Hong Kong umbrella revolution etc.
Though most of the texts remained rather descriptive, somehow underwhelmingly lacking wider and wilder conceptualizations (there were exceptions!), and some of entries already felt outdated (curious case of Petr Pavlensky, for example), one interested in protest-culture will likely find quite a few rabbit holes to explore.
(I personally was unaware about the glorious history of the monetary circulation as a medium of protest: from Christian symbols scratched to the coins of Imperial Rome; from underground mints where the suffragettes engraved the text: “Vote for women” to the British pennies; to the recent dissent images embedded to the Bitcoin blockchain. An interesting thought experiment was to describe the occupy-protests – the radical passivity – in the framework of botanical transhumanism (“resist like a plant!”). The practitioners share the wisdom, gained only through experience: in the suppressive surveillance society it could be wise for protesters to hold their banners facing backwards – so that the faces and slogans would not remain on the same picture; the good protest-art is lightweight, preferably on wheels – because at some point you must remove it anyway; etc.)
The biggest shortcoming of this body of discussions is that some of the most significant and controversial developments in protest culture are left unaddressed. The editors don’t position themselves politically, yet their choices speak clear: liberal, leftist, non-violent. The emergence of far-right populism is mentioned, one author bitterly remarking that the hotspot of protest culture seems to be moving towards populism and far-right extremism – yet the issue is generally avoided, nobody really talks about the elephant in the room, let alone to give the beast a say. Morally and institutionally (Museum-University-Publisher) it may be understandable, but in terms of phenomenological understanding it is a deficiency.
The substantial problematics, areas of emergent crises in protest culture that are more comprehensively discussed are the commodification, institutionalization and tribalization of liberal protest. By some slight exaggeration of the texts, one could say that the protests are become the new norm, so far that the participation in protest has become all but the only form of ecstatic communality in the atomized late capitalist welfare society. In this case, the choice is no longer to whether one should embrace or resist the Power, but the choice is to which resistance one should embrace.
*
“Under the labels of pluralization and individualization, there is an increasing fragmentation of societies, while at the same time they are more intensively networked together. The resulting heterogeneity and polyphony within contemporary society and its sub-societies lead to unrest and insecurity. If everyone is permanently a part of the pattern of inclusions and exclusions, if everyone is fundamentally involved and fundamentally marginalized, then everyone is constantly protesting for against something, and they are part of society that is being protested.” (p 40-41)
*
“When I protest, I show myself, I put myself and my ego on display and refer to others. In doing so, I enter into a series of relations with my viewers, my audience. […] All of a sudden, it not only feels sensible to protest, it feels real good.” (p 339; 336)
---------
Published to mark the passage of the half a century since the magical year of 1968, the collection of articles explores the protest as an aesthetic phenomenon.
Editors have found a way to manage this gargantuan topic by dividing the volume into three conceptual blocks: Images-Signs, Voices-Tongues, Bodies-Spaces. Included essays and interviews act as rather quick phenomenological glimpses: the subcultural history of bomber-jacket; the resemblance of press photos about BLM protests and Hollywood iconography; the post-revolutionary loneliness of veterans of Hong Kong umbrella revolution etc.
Though most of the texts remained rather descriptive, somehow underwhelmingly lacking wider and wilder conceptualizations (there were exceptions!), and some of entries already felt outdated (curious case of Petr Pavlensky, for example), one interested in protest-culture will likely find quite a few rabbit holes to explore.
(I personally was unaware about the glorious history of the monetary circulation as a medium of protest: from Christian symbols scratched to the coins of Imperial Rome; from underground mints where the suffragettes engraved the text: “Vote for women” to the British pennies; to the recent dissent images embedded to the Bitcoin blockchain. An interesting thought experiment was to describe the occupy-protests – the radical passivity – in the framework of botanical transhumanism (“resist like a plant!”). The practitioners share the wisdom, gained only through experience: in the suppressive surveillance society it could be wise for protesters to hold their banners facing backwards – so that the faces and slogans would not remain on the same picture; the good protest-art is lightweight, preferably on wheels – because at some point you must remove it anyway; etc.)
The biggest shortcoming of this body of discussions is that some of the most significant and controversial developments in protest culture are left unaddressed. The editors don’t position themselves politically, yet their choices speak clear: liberal, leftist, non-violent. The emergence of far-right populism is mentioned, one author bitterly remarking that the hotspot of protest culture seems to be moving towards populism and far-right extremism – yet the issue is generally avoided, nobody really talks about the elephant in the room, let alone to give the beast a say. Morally and institutionally (Museum-University-Publisher) it may be understandable, but in terms of phenomenological understanding it is a deficiency.
The substantial problematics, areas of emergent crises in protest culture that are more comprehensively discussed are the commodification, institutionalization and tribalization of liberal protest. By some slight exaggeration of the texts, one could say that the protests are become the new norm, so far that the participation in protest has become all but the only form of ecstatic communality in the atomized late capitalist welfare society. In this case, the choice is no longer to whether one should embrace or resist the Power, but the choice is to which resistance one should embrace.
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