Riots and Militant Occupations
Riots and Militant Occupations
Smashing a System, Building a World A Critical Introduction
Edited by
Alissa Starodub and Andrew Robinson
London New York
Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd
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Selection and editorial matter 2018 by Alissa Starodub and Andrew Robinson
Copyright in individual chapters is held by the respective chapter authors.
All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: HB: 978-1-78660-370-8
PB: 978-1-78660-371-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Starodub, Alissa, 1988 author. | Robinson, Andrew, 1977 author.
Title: Riots and militant occupations : smashing a system, building a world a critical introduction / edited by Alissa Starodub and Andrew Robinson.
Description: London : New York : Rowman & Littlefield International, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2018018224 (print) | LCCN 2018021139 (ebook) | ISBN 9781786603722 (electronic) | ISBN 9781786603708 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781786603715 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: RiotsHistory. | Protest movementsHistory. |InsurgencyHistory.
Classification: LCC HV6474 (ebook) | LCC HV6474 .R56 2018 (print) | DDC 303.6/23dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018018224
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Alissa Starodub and Andrew Robinson
Alissa Starodub
Andrew Robinson
Puv Love
Dimitris Soudias
Members of Calais Migrant Solidarity
Peter Gelderloos
Mauvaise Troupe
Janna Frenzel
Kehinde Olusola Olayode
Ayham Dayoub
Katika Khnreich
Andrew Robinson and Alissa Starodub
Alissa Starodub and Andrew Robinson
During the riots in March 2015 that took place in Frankfurt am Main (Germany) on the day of the opening ceremony for the new building of the European Central Bank, the employee of a small street food shop suddenly stopped serving his clients, dropped what he had in his hands and dashed out into the street, smiling, all excited to take pictures of a burning police car in front of his shop. This is awesome! He almost hugged one of the masked persons who were just about to leave the scene.
This unexpected anecdote reveals a side to riots that is rarely captured by the media or academia: the joyous, exhilarating, transformative power of a radical rupture. It is this aspect of riots that forms the focus for this book. The book will examine a range of riots and militant occupations across different socio-political contexts and from diverse countries such as Greece, Sweden, Germany, Nigeria, Egypt, Italy, Syria, Spain, China and France. It is a collection of narratives and analysis of multiple aspects of riots and militant occupations that helps to demonstrate what a riot or occupation is not from the perspective of the dominant media and political discourses or academic studies about riots, but rather from a perspective from within the riot. As such it sheds a light on the reasons for the contentious relationship of these discourses to riots and militant occupations. The topic of riots has been framed from the perspective of power that aims to preserve the world as it is now. There are other narratives of riots and militant occupations that have emerged from a perspective that is opposed to this power, from a perspective of radical transformation. Yet when it comes to the question of which narratives and perspectives are recognised as legitimate, it is the latter ones that get repressed and silenced. In this book, putting different riots and militant occupations in relation to each other, they appear as clear and determined ruptures with the world as it is emerging from various experiences of oppression in this world. In making this book we have sought to foreground these experiences.
Our approach involves a sharp break with the quantitative, mechanistic approach that dominates the existing literature on riots that literature that usually gets published, spread and referred to in academic or media discourses, as well as with the rationalistic theories that dominate social movement studies. Instead, we seek the voices and perspectives of participants in riots and occupations, both directly (in participant-authored chapters and from academics who are also participants) and indirectly (from academics who use qualitative, meaning-focused methodologies). In doing so, we tie the narrations presented here up with the history of often silenced but valuable narratives about the creative aspects of riots and militant occupations of emancipatory social movements. The paradigm wars in the social sciences are too well rehearsed to be worth refreshing here. Suffice it to say that we are interested in the meanings and subjectivities of participants in militant dissent and for this reason, qualitative and participatory approaches are more appropriate. We are concerned that the quantitative, mechanistic bias in much of the literature reflects the perspective of power a view from above, of actors interested mainly in predicting and containing riots, and thus in sustaining the social conditions that riots protest. This discourse draws attention away from the social actors who participate in militant contestation, rendering them as objects instead of subjects and thus reproducing the very structures that they seek to resist. We wish to produce a reversal of perspective in the Situationist sense, a sharp visibility of the worldviews of those who revolt. There is a challenge in this goal, as we expect many of our readers to be academics and students distant from the experience of radical exclusion that fuels radical dissent.
Our project in this work is expressive, not representational. We do not claim to speak for the unheard (e.g., Wallace and King, 1966). We believe that the unheard are already speaking for themselves through riots and occupations, through other forms of social movement, through immanent movement writings, through their everyday practices, artworks and so on.
We seek to express what utopian ruptures mean for us and for our participants, friends and interviewees in a process of pointing to the voices of the excluded as articulated by Deleuze and Foucault (Deleuze, 1988; 1994; Foucault, 1980; 2004; Olkowski, 1999).
We seek to explore the oppositional narrative articulated in riots as utopian ruptures. There is no single perspective of the chapter authors, who use a range of radical theories and qualitative methodological perspectives. What we have in common, however, is a focus on participatory and meaningful aspects of riots and militant occupations rather than structural, mechanical or outer observational aspects. We believe this provides a clearer sense of the meaning and significance of riots than the more usual focus on observable facts. We seek to help academics and students to see, or intuit, the zones of affect and experience that are manifested in militant contestation as lived zones of affect , rather than as elements of the media spectacle or as images produced by those in power.
