The Formation Of Political Subjects

The Formation of Political Subjects. Tenant Protest in Berlin and New York

 

A crucial point in the development of urban social movements is their ability to form coalitions to overcome the deep entrenched structural and discursive fragmentation and particularization of neoliberal societies. The urban seems to be the context in which this can be achieved. In current tenant protest in Berlin and New York, though highly specific in their issues and demands, we can see such an abstraction from personal interests making affiliations of broader political positions possible. In the process of legitimizing their right to stay put some of the protest groups go as far as to make universal claims to (represent) the common good.

But social movement research lacks concepts to fully grasp this process. To counter these shortcomings of social movement research I propose a re-thinking of social protest through the lenses of the formation of political subjects. Such an approach would offer the opportunity to overcome social movement research’s one-sided focus on the actors of protest as merely strategically acting, identity-based and self-interested activists by shifting the focus to the impact of the interplay between structure and discourse on peoples subjectivity, the subject positions they shape in the process of protest and the possible links they thereby offer to others.