The Prefigurative Is Political: On Politics Beyond ‘The State’

Brissette, Emily

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-47776-3_8

Cited by 14 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 14 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Indeed, the contributors to this volume -as demonstrated in the chapters by Monticelli, Yates and de Moor, and du Plessis and Husted -are well aware of the limitations of prefigurative politics; hence, they provide cautions that one should bear in mind while studying prefigurative movements. At the same time, though, critics sometimes fail to acknowledge that, as some scholars of prefiguration have previously pointed out (Brissette, 2016;Monticelli, 2021), we can't deploy the same epistemological lenses used to assess the effects of conventional and contentious politics to study prefigurative politics. To put it bluntly, it would be like using the instruction manual of a fridge to learn how to drive a car.…”

Section: Why Prefigurative Politics?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction

2022

Index

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Why Prefigurative Politics?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction

2022

Index

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…This interpretation of prefigurative practices and the other 'assembly movements' derives in part from the inability of dominant academic frameworks to understand and provide fitting interpretive lenses for the concept (Brisette, 2016). In fact, these frameworks usually describe social movements as 'demanding' and 'grieving' with respect to the separate and reified entity that is the state and, whenever these grievances are not taken into account or met, engaging in confrontational, contentious politics.…”

Section: Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions: Occupy and The Critique Of Prefigurative Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the necessity of prefigurative politics

Monticelli

2021

Thesis Eleven

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The purpose of this article is to elaborate on the concept of prefiguration by outlining the necessity of its contribution to a progressive public philosophy for the 2020s. In the introduction, I explain how the object of critique for many social theorists has shifted over the course of the last decade from neoliberal globalization to capitalism understood as an encompassing form of life. In light of this, I enumerate the features that should define a progressive public philosophy: radical, emancipatory, and decolonized. The introduction is followed by an overview of the academic debates emerging after the North Atlantic financial crisis of 2007–8. Among these, accelerationism fundamentally rejects the incorporation of prefigurative politics in any emancipatory political agenda. To better understand this position, I examine the origin and meaning of prefiguration and prefigurative practices in more detail in Section III. In it, I argue that prefigurative politics entails a holistic approach to social change that digs its roots in feminist and ecological thought and focuses on social reproduction and the preservation of life rather than solely economic production. Subsequently, I deploy the case of Occupy Wall Street to show that a growing number of contemporary social movements are implementing a dualistic strategy that simultaneously combines repertoires of action typical of protest movements with prefigurative practices focused on the embodiment of alternatives. This dualism, along with the limited success of Occupy Wall Street in concretizing its claims and goals, has led prefigurative politics to being labelled as incompatible with, if not even hindering, any emancipatory strategy. My argument instead is that prefigurative politics constitutes a fundamental and necessary component of any political strategy aimed at transcending contemporary capitalism since it conceives progressive social change in an ontologically and epistemologically different way with respect to political parties and protest movements. Taking this into consideration, I conclude that conventional politics and prefigurative politics can be seen as having the potential to mutually reinforce each other and that prefigurative politics should be acknowledged as a pivotal concept in establishing a progressive public philosophy for the 2020s. Only by doing so, will this philosophy be truly radical, emancipatory, and decolonial.

show abstract

“…Institutions may congeal, associations ossify, mores become oppressive and suffocating, but politics holds out the promise and irreducible possibility that we might constitute our world anew. (Brissette :115–116)…”

Section: The Time For Justicementioning

confidence: 99%

Productive Paradoxes: Exploring Prefigurative Practices with Derrida through a Spanish Food Sovereignty Collective

Gordon

2020

Antipode

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

There has been a proliferation in the use of the concept of prefiguration to describe and understand many of the protest and social change movements of the past decade. However, there are key aspects of the concept that remain unexplored. In this paper I consider telos and justice, and unveil a temporal paradox arising from the thinking behind prefiguration. Rather than this temporal paradox of prefiguration being the undoing of the concept, it does in fact have the potential to be its strength. The purpose of this paper is to assert, by drawing on Derrida’s notion of the impossibility of justice, that the temporal paradox of prefiguration is not something to be resolved but instead is to be foregrounded and navigated. I use research from a food sovereignty collective in the north of Spain to offer an illustration of a prefigurative economic politics that embraces Derrida’s justice‐as‐an‐impossibility.

show abstract

The Prefigurative Is Political: On Politics Beyond ‘The State’

Cited by 14 publications

References 14 publications

Introduction

Introduction

On the necessity of prefigurative politics

Productive Paradoxes: Exploring Prefigurative Practices with Derrida through a Spanish Food Sovereignty Collective

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About