Metropolitan stasis@real democracy@post-representative hegemony

on the sociology of "social non-movements" and assemblies

Vassilis Tsianos

pp. 219-236

in: Andreas Oberprantacher, Andrei Siclodi (eds), Subjectivation in political theory and contemporary practices, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Abstract

Assemblies are emblematic choreographies of the common. A metropolitan blockade happens when the urban space, the public space of its inhabitants, turns against itself. This is when the movements that keep it going and the connections that keep it alive are blocked, just to mobilize space and bodies as an immediate means of the acting assembly. While such assemblies may generate panic within established regimes of power, for those who are participating these procedures are basically the ecology of a democracy-to-come. In this chapter, Tsianos addresses the formation of such metropolitan blockades by referring to the assemblies that took place at the Syntagma Square in June 2011 while arguing that no known subjectivation surfaced from such social nonmovements.