Postsecularity, Political Resistance, and Protest in the Occupy Movement

Abstract

This paper examines and critically interprets the interrelations between religion and the Occupy movements of 2011. It presents three main arguments. First, through an examination of the Occupy Movement in the UK and USA—and in particular of the two most prominent Occupy camps (Wall Street and London Stock Exchange)—the paper traces the emergence of postsecularity evidenced in the rapprochement of religious and secular actors, discourses, and practices in the event‐spaces of Occupy. Second, it examines the specific set of challenges that Occupy has posed to the Christian church in the UK and USA, arguing that religious participation in the camps served at least in part to identify wider areas of religious faith that are themselves in need of redemption. Third, the paper considers the challenges posed by religious groups to Occupy, not least in the emphasis on postmaterial values in pathways to resistance against contemporary capitalism.

Post-secular rapprochement in peripheralized regions – politics of withdrawal and parish community responses

“…Putting it more generally, yet in line with the general assumptions of the aforementioned statements, a number of studies essentially highlight questions of social or spatial justice (e.g., Conradson, 2008;Beaumont and Dias, 2008). Motivations, thus, may be interpreted as forms of resistance against subjection (e.g., Cloke et al, 2016;Williams et al, 2012). These issues seem to be related to feelings of loss, e.g., in cases of withdrawal of support by state institutions (Williams, 2015:194) following "the neoliberal shrinkage of the formal state" or "regimes of austerity welfare" (Cloke et al, 2016:499).…”

“…Instead, the specific relation between religions, ethical issues and social as well as spatial justice has become a key concern of several scholars (e.g., Cloke et al, , 2016Williams et al, 2012).…”

Geographies of Postsecularity

“…Similar shifts towards postsecularity are also evident in the discourses and practices of international development and humanitarianism (Ager and Ager 2011; Deneulin and Rakodi 2011; Khanum 2012; Mitchell 2017), and in the growth of 'alternative' economic spaces linked to Islamic influence in global political-economic networks (Atia 2012;Pollard and Samers 2007). Further evidence of postsecularity can be found in the pluralistic sensibilities and horizontalist organisation of recent social movements -for example, Occupy Wall Street, Taksim Gezi Park and the Arab Spring (see Cloke et al 2016;Barbato 2012;Dabashi 2012;Mavelli 2012) -all of which have been marked by an explicit 'crossing over' of religious and secular narratives, symbolism, practice, and performance in public space. These trends, events, and circumstances indicate not so much a differentiation of religion from supposedly secular spheres of political, cultural, and economic life (Wilford 2010), but rather how the mutually constitutive dynamics between religious and secular are becoming increasingly visible in the public domain.…”

“…In their account of the relationship between religion and contemporary activism in the Occupy movement, Cloke et al (2016) argue that religious involvement helped to facilitate progressive crossover narratives that enabled both to discern the spiritual aspects of capitalism, and to galvanise prepolitical values of hope, faith, and love in the context of prefigurative projects of economic democracy and social liberation. In recognising capitalism as a regime of desire, emergent politics and ethics of postsecularity engage with the possibility of working towards a reformulation of prepolitical desire around notions of receptive generosity, respect for alterity, and reaching out with agape and caritas to neighbours and to enemies; that is, postsecularity works towards the reshaping of subjectivities by combatting neoliberal structuring of desire with new resonances of reenchantment.…”

“…However, alongside this secular turn to an ontologically-heavy politics based on the 'real' and 'moral' power of each object within any given urban assemblage, a significant segment of the envisioning of re-enchantment has embraced the values and critical capacities of left-leaning religion, arguing that a crisis of secular consciousness requires new spaces and subjectivities of spiritual disobedience in which hierarchies, dispositions, and deeply held beliefs can be reworked. In their evaluation of Occupy, Cloke et al (2016) exemplify this kind of spiritual disobedience:…”