Taking the Square: Mediated Dissent and Occupations of Public Space (Radical Subjects in International Politics) - Softcover

Rovisco, Maria

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1783483962 ISBN 13: 9781783483969

Publisher: Rli, 2016

Synopsis

Explores a rich variety of occupations of public space in order to explore new forms of public expression and modes of citizen participation.

About this title

About the Author

Maria Rovisco and Jonathan Corpus Ong are both lecturers in media and communication at the University of Leicester.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Taking the Square

Mediated Dissent and Occupations of Public Space

By Maria Rovisco, Jonathan Corpus Ong

Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd.

Copyright © 2016 Maria Rovisco and Jonathan Corpus Ong
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78348-396-9

Contents

Acknowledgements, vii, 
Introduction Maria Rovisco and Jonathan Corpus Ong, 1, 
I: Street Politics, Occupations and Dissent, 13, 
1 Identity, Place and Politics: From Picket Lines to Occupation Pollyanna Ruiz, 15, 
2 Occupying the Digital-Popular Paolo Gerbaudo, 37, 
3 Place, Protest and Communciation: Protest Camps and the Mediatisation of Space Fabian Frenzel, Patrick McCurdy and Anna Feigenbaum, 55, 
II: Democratic Struggles, New Publics and Mediated Protest, 75, 
4 Protest as Interruption of the Disaster Imaginary: Overcoming Voice-Denying Rationalities in Post-Haiyan Philippines Nicole Curato, Jonathan Corpus Ong and Liezel Longboan, 77, 
5 'We Live in Public': Twitter and Self-Mediated HyperVisibility in the Occupy Wall Street Movement Joel Penney, 97, 
6 The Relationship between Online and Offline Participation in a Social Movement: Gezi Park Protests in the Diaspora Christine Ogan, Roya Imani Giglou and Leen d'Haenens, 117, 
7 Mediating Movement in Occupied Spaces: Documentation in Social Media during the Umbrella Movement Lisa Y. M. Leung, 139, 
III: The Performance of Protest, 157, 
8 Performative Revolution in Egypt: An Essay in Cultural Power Jeffrey C. Alexander, 159, 
9 Hybridity in Street Performance of Zulu and Mardi Gras Indians in New Orleans Diane Grams, 185, 
10 Minority Groups and Strategies of Display and Dissent in Physical, Virtual and Hybrid Spaces Cheryll Ruth R. Soriano and Ruepert Jiel Cao, 207, 
Index, 229, 
Contributors, 241, 

CHAPTER 1

Identity, Place and Politics

From Picket Lines to Occupation

Pollyanna Ruiz

This chapter contribution will explore the way in which protesters' physical occupation of city spaces has unfolded over time. It will begin by focusing on the way in which those who perceive themselves to have been excluded from the process of democracy demonstrate their lack of place within the wider community by occupying shared public spaces. It will go on to examine the way in which these dynamics have been enacted by protesters through the formation of picket lines during trade union disputes, the creation of a permanent picket outside South African Embassies during anti-apartheid campaigns, and the occupation of city squares during more recent demonstrations against the austerity measures. In doing so, it will trace an important series of interconnected shifts in protest culture. The factory gate picket line was an expression of bottom-up class-based resistance predicated on the withdrawal of labour. In contrast, protests against apartheid were not bound together by collective experience. They were mobilised by an identity politics that transcended shared community boundaries. Moreover, their call to action was based upon a refusal to participate in the labour of consumption rather production. This stretching out of the relationship between identity, place and politics has been further extended by anti-austerity protesters. Anti-austerity protests draw on a network of disembodied social identities and networks rather than community-based ties. Furthermore, their simultaneous occupation of city spaces implicated in the nebulous and intangible dynamics of neo-liberalism attempts to construct a sense of collective identity beyond the production/consumption binary of global capital. This analysis will illuminate the way in which protest sites and demonstrative forms are intimately connected, and contribute to the theorisation of politics from below.

Groups of people who perceive themselves to have been excluded from the processes of democracy frequently demonstrate their lack of place within the wider community by occupying shared public spaces (Pickering and Krinsky, 2012). Thus, for example, the unemployed marched from Jarrow to London in the 1930s, while the Zapatistas marched from Chiapas to Mexico City in the 1990s. More recently, the squares and streets of Tunisia, Spain, Washington and London have been occupied by protesters calling for a diverse but often interconnected range of changes to the way in which they are governed. These groups' occupation of physical mainstream places offers them the opportunity to enter the previously inaccessible symbolic spaces constructed by the mainstream media (Ruiz, 2014). While the number of physical spaces in which protesters can gather is increasingly being limited (Madden, 2010), the occupation of public space remains a popular and effective protest tactic which enables demonstrators to access the attention of wider publics (Gerbaudo, 2012).

These dynamics have been most recently demonstrated by social movements responding to the crisis in political authority that has characterised the start of the twenty-first century (Norris, 1998). These include the mobilisations that have since become known as the Arab Spring in 2010, as well as the Occupy encampments that sprung up in cities across Europe and America in 2011. While these movements are different in many ways, they are similar in that 'the occupation and subversion of prominent public spaces' (Halvorsen, 2012, p. 431) has been central to the ways in which they have both constructed their own sense of collective identity and communicated that identity to the societies within which they exist.

The wave of occupations which took place in the spring of 2015 in universities such as Bungehuis and Mangdenhuis in Amsterdam, and the LSE and Goldsmiths in London demonstrate the continued popularity of this protest form in Europe. These occupations draw from a tradition which, in the United Kingdom, includes peace camps such as those set up by women activists on Greenham common, anti-road encampments such as those established by protesters at Newbury, and climate camps such as those which sprung up around Heathrow and at Gleneagles. However, recent occupations are different from these precursors in that they have moved from geographically marginal spaces and set up camp in the heart of large urban centres. These city spaces are unique in that they enable protesters to 'develop counter hegemonic ideas and oppositional identities' (Polletta and Jasper, 2001, p. 288) and articulate these alternatives to the ordinary people moving through the non-political spaces that physically surrounds them.

Since the 1960s, new social movements have tended to rely upon staging 'media-orientated public demonstrations' which address a globalised audience (Thorn, 2007, p. 901). Indeed, the processes of mediation have become increasingly central in the construction of collective identities and the political actions (Castells, 2007; Cammaerts, 2012) and the role of networked communications in the occupation of public space is of increasing importance (Castells, 2012; Couldry and Curran, 2003; Hands, 2011). While the move towards digitalised communications has been enormously productive organisationally (Lievrouw, 2011), the move from collective to connective action (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012) highlights a series of issues that complicate the ongoing relationship between identity, place and politics. For example, Connerton (2009) argues that the bodily experiences of place secure memories and suggests that the increased 'velocity' of networked communications is contributing to a loss of temporal coherence. This chapter contribution will therefore explore the way in which protesters' physical occupation of city spaces over time has contributed to the construction of protesters' political identities.

The relationship between communication and place is of vital importance when trying to read these defiantly occupied spaces as both arenas for 'for withdrawal and regroupment' and as 'a training ground for agitational activities directed towards wider publics' (Fraser, 1990, p. 68). This chapter will examine these dynamics through the prism of three different but interconnected protest repertoires; the formation of picket lines during the trade union disputes that characterised the twentieth century, the creation of permanent pickets outside South African embassies during the apartheid era; and the encampments which sprang up in city squares during Occupy's demonstrations against the introduction of austerity measures. It will argue that while the occupation of public places has always offered activists a space in which to engage with the mainstream while also reflecting upon the formulation of oppositional identities, more recent occupations have elided these two functions to create a subaltern public sphere in which identity formation becomes a form of engagement with the wider public. Thus, this article will trace an important series of interconnected shifts in protest culture focusing in particular on the way in which citizens reclaim public space as a place to play out, both expressively and deliberatively, struggles for recognition and new political subjectivities.

PICKET LINES AND COUNTER PUBLICS

I begin by examining the role of identity, place and politics in the formation of picket lines during trade union disputes. Workers strike 'in an effort to gain material improvements to their lives, to resist their exploitation at work and to establish their dignity at work' (Guard, 2004, p. 133). During a trade union dispute, workers withdraw their physical labour from the process of production and use their bodies to construct a line across the factory gate or office door. This interrupts the day-to-day rhythms of the workplace and prevents other workers from being brought in to replace their labour. Thus, the picket line is an embodied form of resistance which brings workers, strikers and passing members of the public into physical relationship with each other within the confines of a particular place, and in doing so attempts to impact upon the material well-being of managers and owners.

However, the formation of a picket line does more than simply block access to a place of work, it also creates a symbolic space in which workers articulate their grievances. During a strike, workers represent their interests both to themselves as a newly formed collective, and to the wider public. Moreover, a worker/striker's sense of political identity is in many ways constructed and then communicated through their experience of place. For example, the moment in which an individual's social role shifts from that of a worker to a striker is marked by the physical move from the factory or office to the streets that surround it. From that moment, discussions about the strike, its causes, its developments and its possible resolution tend to take place in an explicitly public arena. Consequently, one could argue that the pavement beyond the factory gate/ office door becomes a public sphere; a space in which 'private individuals assemble to form a public body' (Habermas, 1974, p. 49) in order to achieve a consensus as to what constitutes the common good.

According to Habermas the public sphere is universally accessible to all. However, as has been pointed out, 'a relation of inclusion/exclusion is part of the very logic of discourse, even democratic discourse' (Darlberg, 2007, pp. 834-835). Indeed, the exclusion of some categories of people is precisely what enables subaltern groups to constitute an explicitly alternative public sphere, one that is formed away from the 'supervision of dominant groups' (Fraser, 1990, p. 66). Thus, the picket line occupies a place that is deliberately set apart from the buildings that surround it. It is a space that refuses to accommodate those who do not support the strike, such as owners, potential strike breakers, and the police; a space which stands in an explicitly contestatory relationship to more official public arenas (Curran, 1991; Fraser, 1990; Mouffe, 2005).

The relationship between official public spheres and subaltern or counter publics is complex. In my book Articulating Dissent; Protest and the Public Sphere, I offer an interpretation that allows counter publics to be occupied by individuals who are actively 'choosing marginality' (Hooks cited in Soja and Hooper, 1993, p. 103) instead of, or indeed as well as, those who have been relegated to the fringes of public life. I follow Lefebvre for whom the material spaces of political difference are a way of linking 'that which is near and far, here and there, actual and utopian, possible and impossible' (2000, p. 27). Thus I argue that the boundaries between the subaltern and official publics can be usefully understood as connecting as well as separating the political margins to the mainstream. This conceptual move enables one to move away from a binary model of the public sphere and towards one which explores the varied relationships between multiple spheres.

Thus, the picket line serves a number of functions in addition to that of interrupting the processes of production. For example, the Fire Brigade Union's guide to organising effective industrial action states that

[m]any brigades and branches have made them almost social events with barbecues (no alcohol), impromptu meetings etc. As well as being an event with an internal audience, they are a show of purpose and an opportunity to communicate our aims to the public and the media. (FBU, 2013, p. 3)

This is an understanding of the picket line that is shared by unions such as the train driver's union (ASLEF), and the public and commercial services union (PCS). As such, a picket line can be seen to fulfil the two functions that Fraser allocates to the formation of a subaltern or counter public sphere. First, the picket line functions as a base and training ground for 'agitational activities directed towards wider publics' and, secondly, it functions as a space for 'withdrawal and regroupment' which enables subaltern groups to 'formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests and needs' (Fraser, 1990, p. 68).

I would like to begin by exploring the ways in which the picket line illustrates the first of the two functions outlined above. The picket line, like the public sphere more generally, is constituted through the construction of carefully maintained boundaries which, in this instance, are brought into being through the occupation of material places. The relationship between the material and the symbolic is key to understanding the way in which resisting identities are formed both within the geographical spaces of the street and the mediated spaces in the papers and on our screens. Thus, the line of striking individuals that collectively constitutes a picket line can be read as embodying the abstract binary fault lines which constitute the formation of a subaltern public sphere (Goode, 2005). Chatterton describes the places in which activists and non-activists meet as 'uncommon ground' (2006, p. 259) and the encounters that take place between them as 'emotionally laden, relational, hybrid, corporeal and contingent' (2006, p. 260).

Indeed, the line of workers standing in front of the factory gate or office door constitutes both a point of connection between the workers/ strikers and the wider public, and a point of separation between the strikers and managers, owners and the police. This boundary is not static but subject to constant negotiation. For example, it is negotiated through strikers' contact with other workers. These face-to-face communications aim to convert passing workers who are then expected to demonstrate solidarity by joining the picket line. They also attempt to elicit support from the wider community through the collection of petition signatures and donations (Beale, 2005). As such, the picket line pulls passers-by towards it and tries to incorporate them into a newly formed collective sense of 'we' (Taylor, 2003).

However, on other occasions they may breach the line and enter the factory or office space. In these instances, strike-breakers literally cross the line that distinguishes the counter-public on the pavement from the privatised spaces associated with managers and owners in the workplace. Indeed, the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion of the picket line are so rigorously policed that the move from one side of the line to the other almost always 'destroys political association' and tips agonistic friend/opponent relations into antagonistic friend/enemy relations (Mouffe, 2005, p. 20). The language of the picket line illustrates the enormity of such a betrayal. The word 'strike' already denotes a physicality that borders on the violent. Those who cross the picket line are described even more forcefully as 'strike breakers' at best, and as 'scabs' and 'parasites' at worst (Brennen, 2006, p. 69). The fact that the vitality of this language has historically been extended to a repertoire of strike actions that can include physical 'taunts, threats and abuse' (Guard, 2004, p. 118) illustrates the way in which the symbolic and the material are inextricably intertwined and bought into being through the contested occupation of place.

As 'all communities larger than primordial villages of face to face contact are imagined' (Anderson, 1983, p. 15) strikers are inevitably required to communicate through the media with wider national, and sometimes even international, publics (Peters, 1993). Consequently these us/them frictions extend beyond the material spaces constituted by the picket line and into mediated spaces constituted by the news. Thus, the picket line constitutes an important node through which strikers can become 'interconnected' through 'a complex processes of social identification and mobilisation' (Beale, 2005, p. 146) across various media spaces. As such, it constitutes an 'important loci of collective memory' which constructs and sustains various competing configurations of workplace solidarity (Routledge, 2003; Harvey, 1996). Thus the picket line invariably becomes a photogenic backdrop to debates and/or conflicts as they unfold in the local and regional press.

In these ways, the 'geography of a dispute' (Beale, 2005, p. 127) brings into being and embodies the relationship between strikers and the wider public in and beyond their immediate community. As well as making 'the strike real' to potential supporters (Beale, 2005, p. 141) the picket line creates a space in which the dispute is made real to workers/strikers themselves. Indeed, one of the most interesting things about the formation of us/them boundaries on the picket line, is their contribution to the formation of a collective sense of 'us'; the sense of who we are that ultimately constitutes any social identity including that of protester (Taylor, 2003). Having explored the ways in which the picket line acts as a 'base and training ground for agitational activities directed towards wider publics', I'd now like to turn my attention to the way in which it acts as a space in which oppositional identities and needs can be formed (Fraser, 1990, p. 68).

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Rli
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1783483962
• ISBN 13: 9781783483969
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 252