Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics (Cambridge Studies in International Relations, Series Number 70)

Popular dissent, such as street demonstrations and civil disobedience, has become increasingly transnational in nature and scope. As a result, a local act of resistance can acquire almost immediately a much larger, cross-territorial dimension. This book draws upon a broad and innovative range of sources to scrutinise this central but often neglected aspect of global politics. Through case studies that span from Renaissance perceptions of human agency to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the author examines how the theory and practice of popular dissent has emerged and evolved during the modern period. Dissent, he argues, is more than just transnational. It has become an important 'transversal' phenomenon: an array of diverse political practices which not only cross national boundaries, but also challenge the spatial logic through which these boundaries frame international relations. Series Copyright Contents Acknowledgements Prologue: Theorising transversal dissent Introduction: Writing human agency after the death of God The task of a genealogy of popular dissent Modern continuities: the recurring search for foundational authority Postmodern discontinuities: transversal dissent and processes of globalisation An instance of transversal dissent: reading and rereading the collapse of the Berlin Wall The problem of grounding an understanding of human agency: (1) the usefulness of the concept of discourse The problem of grounding an understanding of human agency: (2) the role of contingent foundations The problem of grounding an understanding of human agency: (3) ‘how to say no more than we know’ An instance of transversal dissent: linguistic interferences with the social and spatial constitution of East German politics Language and human agency: the problem of translation From proofs to traces, or how to evaluate a disruptive reading of global politics Part I: A genealogy of popular dissent 1 Rhetorics of dissent in Renaissance Humanism From heaven to earth: the new humanist vision The rhetorical origins of popular dissent Protestantism and the problem of free will Rage, rebellion and the voice of the sceptic Summary 2 Romanticism and the dissemination ofradical resistance The human subject in Enlightenment thought Romanticism and the aesthetic revival of human agency Rebellious individualism as a foundation of dissent From theory to practice, from individual to collective action Summary 3 Global legacies of popular dissent Framing radical resistance: the modernization of direct action Direct action as a global strategy of mass protest Substituting God: modernity and the quest for certainty Time, space and speed in a transversal world Summary Part II: Reading and rereading transversal struggles 4 From essentialist to discursive conceptions ofpower Voice and exit: popular dissent as cross-territorial transgression Probing consent based conceptions of power The contextual dynamics of transversal politics Towards a discursive understanding of power relations Summary First interlude: Confronting incommensurability Postmodernism, or life after the death of God 5 Of ‘men’, ‘women’ and discursivedomination Problematising sex and gender The masculinist dimensions of popular dissent Writing his-story: the power of framing the past Progress as regress? Women and transversal social change Summary 6 Of great events and what makes them great Transforming values and nurturing dissent inthe public sphere Discursive transgressions, hegemonies, counter-hegemonies Summary Part III: Discursive terrains of dissent 7 Mapping everyday global resistance The lingering power of discursive voids How being is always already that which it is not Networks of anti-discipline / everyday forms of resistance Summary Second interlude: Towards a discursive understanding of human agency Theorising cross-territorial transgression: discourse, tactic, temporality 8 Resistance at the edge of language games The metaphorical structure of language as social practice Critique of language as an everyday form of global resistance Writing dissent I: disenchanting the concept Writing dissent II: thoughts on the substance of form Summary 9 Political boundaries, poetic transgressions The politics of living in a socio-linguistic order Transgressing the boundaries of normalised thought The transversal subversion of naming dailiness Poetic dissent and the limits of aesthetic autonomy Summary Conclusion: The transitional contingencies of transversal politics Visualising transversal dissent Rethinking human agency in global politics: theoretical puzzles, methodological trajectories Thinking past the givenness of global politics: insights from the poetic imagination Transgressions, transitions, circularity Index Cambridge studies in international realtions

This book examines a wide range of dissident practices, from street protests to political poetry, in an attempt to demonstrate that they are becoming an increasingly important aspect of global politics. The author draws on several case studies, including an analysis of the events that led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall. The theoretical discussions focus on how people influence the course of politics at a time when boundaries between domestic and international spheres are blurring.

This book demonstrates how popular dissent is becoming an increasingly important aspect of global politics. The author draws upon several case studies, including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, to show how people influence the course of politics at a time when boundaries between domestic and international spheres are blurring.