Nonviolence Ain't What It Used To Be (eBook)

Unarmed Insurrection and the Rhetoric of Resistance

Shon Meckfessel (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016
250 Seiten
AK Press (Verlag)
978-1-84935-230-7 (ISBN)

Infos

Nonviolence ain't what it used to be. A guide to today’s forms of political struggle.

---

"Shon Meckfessel . . . brings a fresh perspective to the stubborn debates around violence and nonviolence and suggests a way to move beyond the left's tactical impasse. Nonviolence Ain't What It Used to Be won't settle the old argument, but it may start a new one."—Kristian Williams, Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America

Shon Meckfessel takes an innovative look at challenges faced by twenty-first century social movements in the US. One of their most important stumbling blocks is the question of nonviolence. Civil disobedience, symbolic protest, and principles of nonviolence have characterized many struggles in the United States since the Civil Rights era. But as Meckfessel argues, conditions have changed. We've seen the consolidation of the media, the militarization of policing, the co-optation and institutionalization of dissent, among many other shifts. The rules have changed, but the rhetoric, logic, and strategic tools we employ haven't necessarily kept pace, and narratives borrowed from movements of the past are falling short.

Nonviolence Ain't What It Used to Be maps the emerging, more militant approaches that seem to be developing to fill the gap, from Occupy to Ferguson. It offers new angles on a seemingly intractable debate, introducing terms and criteria that carve out a larger middle-ground between the two camps, in order to chart a path forward.

Shon Meckfessel is the author of Suffled How It Gush: A North American Anarchist in the Balkans as well as numerous essays and articles. He is a member of the English faculty at Highline College in Seattle, Washington.

Autor

Shon Meckfessel has been active in disruptive social movements for nearly 25 years, beginning in his native Sacramento, CA. After blocking highways to stop the first Persian Gulf War, he was never again inclined to petitionary protest. He has since researched and participated in social movements across the US, Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America. Shon is the author of Suffled How It Gush: A North American Anarchist in the Balkans as well as numerous essays and articles. He has appeared as a social movement scholar and advocate in the New York Times and on Democracy Now, Al Jazeera, CNN, NPR, BBC, Radio, and Fox News. Shon is a member of the English Faculty at Highline College.

Inhalt

Introduction
Part I
1.0 Neoliberal Exigences
1.1 Managed Dissent: Indirect Rule, Consumerism, and the NPIC
1.1a Political Institutionalization of Dissent
1.1b Indirect Rule
1.1c Consumerism
1.1d Institutionalized Dissent as “Civil Society”
1.2 Policing as a Non-Tangential Exigency
1.3 From Masses to Publics
1.3a Why Elizabeth Eckford is Still Alive
1.3b We Are the 94%
1.3c Hannah Arendt and the Direct Demos
Part II
2.0 The Strange Magic of Nonviolence
2.1 Introduction: What Happened to Nonviolence?
2.2 The Nonopposition of Non/Violence
2.3 Disavowal by Non/Definition
2.4 Condemnatory Equivalizing
2.5 Nonviolence as a Strategy of Condescension
2.6 Nonviolence as Conflict Aversion
Part III
3.0 The Eloquence of Targeted Property Destruction
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Forced Comparison
3.3 Desubjectification
3.4 Profanation
Part IV
4.0 The Eloquence of Police Clashes
4.1 Disidentification
4.2 Disinvestment
4.3 Empowering Reversal
4.4 Backlighting
Part V
5.0 The Characteristics of Movements to Come
5.1 Who (and How) Was Occupy?
5.1a Who (And Which) are The People?
5.1b Topics and their Publics
5.2 After Victimhood, Beyond Innocence
5.2a After Victimhood
5.2b Beyond Innocence
5.3 Agency and Possibility in Defigurative Politics
5.3a Semiotic Transgression

Index

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 17.10.2016
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Systeme
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Theorie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: gas-lighting • Gaslighting • Media Studies • Nonviolent • nonviolent protest • Peace • police violence • property destrruction • violent protest
• ISBN-10: 1-84935-230-5 / 1849352305
• ISBN-13: 978-1-84935-230-7 / 9781849352307