Public Space Democracy

Performative, Visual and Normative Dimensions of Politics in a Global Age

Nilüfer Göle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032045535
• eBook ISBN: 9781000567878
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume takes a global view of the emergence of public protest movements over the last decade, asking whether such movements contribute to the globalization of civil society. Through a variety of studies, organised around the themes of public agency, public norms, public memory and public art, it considers the tendency of political contestations to move beyond national boundaries and create transnational connections. Departing from the approaches of social movements perspectives, it focuses on public space as a site of social "mixity" and opens up a new field for the study of politics and cultural controversies. An analysis of the paradigmatic change in the way in which society is made and politics is conducted, this study of the new enactment of citizenship in public space will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, geography and politics with interests in protest movements and contentious politics, citizenship and the public sphere, and globalization.

Part I

Public agency as a new form of protest

DOI: 10.4324/9781003193753-2

1 Public space democracy, assembly and creativity

Nilüfer Göle

DOI: 10.4324/9781003193753-3

Introduction: meta-theoretical questions

The ideal of democracy does not remain the same at all times in all places. There are times in history when aspiration for justice, equality and freedom fuels people’s imaginaries and shapes social struggles, triggering revolutions, as was the case during the rise of the Arab Spring movements. There also exist advanced democratic societies, such as in the West, in which civil rights and freedoms are taken for granted, and citizens feel free to express a form of indifference to electoral politics. Politics is not free from the feelings of citizens and the ways they translate their apathy, anger or revolutionary zeal into collective power.

Today we are observing a growing distrust in representative democracy. In the face of the unknown and uncertainty, people feel endangered in societies facing ethnic and civil wars but also in European societies confronting mass migratory movements and jihadist terrorism. Politics of resentment and anger lead to the rise of authoritarian leaders and neopopulist movements to power in emerging countries and established democracies alike. Can we still, in the present day, affirm that the principles of equality, justice for all, individual freedom and cultural pluralism are shared values to the point of mobilizing people’s affects and actions and setting the agendas for democratic politics? Or should we consider democracy as a moment of exception in history, intrinsically related to the end of empires and the rise of nation states? Democracy is associated with the development of liberal market capitalism and the extension of secular values from state power to private life. Should we acknowledge the failure of this form of democracy as a fading self-image of the West? To what extent, in the global age, does the democratic ideal, while extending from the Western experience to other parts of the world, endorse new political forms and cultural meanings and lead to the empowerment of people?

Global problems such as climate change, environmental catastrophes, epidemics, financial crises, humanitarian tragedies and terrorism are all problems that act beyond national borders and contribute to the feeling of disempowerment of citizens and distrust in governments. Rather than weakening state power, globalization leads to conditions that call for strong nation states that are emerging almost everywhere as strong entities with popular support. As we have observed in the case of jihadist terrorist attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, citizens are supportive of strong measures of public policy for dealing with global security and health issues. In the present age, digital techniques of governance facilitate state control over the population, keeping constant surveillance over public life and accessing personal data, all with the consent of individuals. In different parts of the world, declaration of a state of emergency, adoption of a language of war and periodic curfews are gradually becoming part of an everyday reality, weakening established democratic institutions and threatening individual freedom and mobility.

For some observers, cities are the best hope for democracy, in contrast with nation states that claim sovereignty and impose politics of vertical integration from the top down. In his manifesto, Benjamin Barber considers the city to be a “mezzo political unity”, much more suitable for developing the horizontal ties and cooperation that are required to face global problems (Barber 2013).

City life and public spaces are indeed essential scenes for individual freedom and social interactions. They constitute the foundations of democratic polity, the “agora” of ancient Greek democracy. The notions of the public sphere, public space and public square are often used interchangeably to relate democracy to urban life. Public places – agoras – are spatial physical realities, public squares, coffee houses or literary clubs in which residents can gather, inhabit and interact, whereas the abstract notion of the public sphere refers idealistically to an open space as “Öffentlichkeit” – open for access to all citizens – a prerequisite for an egalitarian, vibrant, debate-based democratic life.

The seminal work of the philosopher Jürgen Habermas contributed to the linking public of the sphere and democracy in the modern age (Habermas 1989). The equal access of citizens to the public sphere, rational critical debate of political matters and consensus building are defined as the prerequisites for a vital democratic system.¹ The abstract and virtual public sphere, referring to participation of citizens, debate and democracy, is not independent from real gatherings in public places and everyday politics. However, in time, the two notions are separated according to their usage in different disciplines. Public sphere is more widely used in political philosophy, whereas public place is reserved for urban studies, art and architecture.

Beyond the semantic questions, the conditions that define the public sphere are transformed under the globalizing forces of modernity. First, with the advent of communication technologies, the public sphere acquired new capabilities for “virtual” publics and is assimilated with social media. Second, the process of globalization and flows of migration led to the extension of the frontiers of the public sphere beyond a single language and national communities. Hence the foundations of the public sphere, located in the literate societies of the West and in the homogenizing powers of nation states, are unsettled. In the global age of communication, the public sphere extends beyond national boundaries and plays out in dematerialized and deterritorialized social relations.

Currently we inhabit a multicultural world, a product of the massive migration of ideas, values and beliefs as well as human beings. However, this state of affairs is accompanied by a state of mind that Zygmunt Bauman considers “mixophobia”, which is the horror of mixing and the urge for territorial separation (Bauman 2016: 182–189). The undesired proximity between different social groups, realities and cultures engenders anxiety, resentment and rejection instead of familiarization with each other and cooperation. Cities and public life once considered places favourable to “stranger sociability” (Warner 2002) are now characterized by hostility toward each other and by strategies to avoid social blending. The architecture of social segregation becomes part of city life.

The contemporary figure of the “stranger”, the global migrant, appears as a radical other in host nation states. The emblematic figure of urban modernity, Baudelaire’s “flaneur”, the casual wanderer and reporter of city life, belongs to the nostalgic past. The migrant is the undesired figure of global modernity, whose mobility and presence are subject to making laws and building walls.

Modern city life is sustained under strict surveillance – all sorts of regulations ranging from security and hygiene to property rights aim to discipline citizens and ensure public order. Gentrification pushes the poor out of cities, gated communities lead to social segregation, and the urban spaces for the mixity (i.e. the blending of diverse groups) of social life and interaction are disappearing. The emancipatory power of the urban public sphere as a site for civil liberties such as the freedom of mobility, anonymous gatherings and the visibility of actors is eroding. Even in advanced democracies, the public sphere is in danger of no longer being a free common space; it retreats from the lives of citizens, becomes inaccessible for bringing new issues to public attention and loses its power in shaping democratic agendas.

Reclaiming public space

Social phenomena strike in unexpected ways, sometimes without any warning signs. Revolutions are boisterous, invoke a rupture with the past, aim at macro-level changes and transform structures of power. Social movements, on the other hand, occur on the micro-level, instigating a diffuse but long-lasting change in cultural values, as in the cases of the May 68, feminism, gay and green movements. In some cases, religious movements lead to changes from above, as in the case of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. In other cases, the claims of pious actors lead to religious visibility in public as the European public sphere has witnessed. Social scientists face the difficult task of anticipating and designating those practices that carry the potential germs of democracy and modes of social transformation.

The wave of protest movements that have emerged in the 2010s by the occupation of public places, such as Tahrir Square in Egypt, Gezi Park in Turkey, the 15-M Movement in Spain and more recently the yellow vests movement in France, strike us as a series of unanticipated events. They spread out on a global scale and bring new collective subjects and political agendas to our attention. Occupation of public spaces, the assembly of people and enactment of new forms of citizenship are the common features of “public space democracy”. In many places the hope for “new beginnings” (as the term “Arab Spring” expresses) vanished, followed by severe repression or by the failure to carry the aspirations of the actors into the political realm. However, the experience of the occupation and its “spirit” continue to animate the initiatives of civil society, find avenues of representation in the domain of art and enter into research agendas, contributing to a long-term effect beyond the time span of the event.

The time span of public occupations is not the same for long-term political engagements and party politics. As is often claimed, these movements lack political organization and are characterized by their spontaneous energy, which does not last. They appear as a momentary and ephemeral phenomenon. Actors of protest, after a time of collective euphoria and mobilization, become either too exhausted to sustain the movement or vulnerable in the face of repression. In some cases, the movements scatter and disappear by their own weariness; in other cases, they are subject to police violence and political repression. The impact of these protests on established political life also varies according to contexts. In some countries, uprisings overthrew the political regimes in power. In others, they were followed by the implementation of an authoritarian state power and even by a military takeover. In places where politics of repression took over, freedom of speech was restricted, opposition was criminalized, journalists and academics were put in jail, and public gatherings became almost inconceivable. In repressing these movements, the political regimes have proven their ascendancy over society and taken control over the public sphere. To the extent that the state becomes hegemonic over the organization of social life, controls the choices of lifestyles and restricts the expression of personal beliefs and convictions, the public sphere loses its autonomy and ceases to be the hub for the visibility of actors and emergence of new democratic imaginaries.

So, should we conclude that occupation movements have failed to revitalize democracy; that they have turned out to be “non-events”; and that public space democracy represents a distant dream? One could also reverse the question and ask: what was so troublesome about these movements that they led to state intervention? Why, in so many countries, have political powers used excessive and disproportionate repression (police violence, criminalization of protesters and military power) against by-and-large peaceful public protesters?

The Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 were repressed by the Chinese political regime, a regime that today continues to criminalize the sympathizers of that memory and to increase its surveillance over its citizens. One can consider the Tiananmen case a precursor to public space movements. Giorgio Agamben has identified in the Tiananmen demonstrations the sign of a “political prophecy” in which

the novelty of the coming politics is that they will no longer be a struggle for the conquest of the state, but a struggle between the state and the non-state (humanity), an insurmountable disjunction between whatever singularity and state organization.

(Agamben 1993: 85)

According to Agamben, when the state is faced with the expression of singularities that are not represented but nevertheless appear as a community, this is precisely the situation in which the state has absolutely no means to negotiate, to cooperate. “Whatever singularity, which wants to appropriate belonging itself, its own-being-in-the-language, and thus rejects all identity and every condition of belonging, is the principal enemy of the state” (Agamben 1993: 86). He explains the exertion of state violence against this new political protagonist: “wherever those si...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• The logo as a scientific tool
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• PART I: Public agency as a new form of protest
• PART II: Public culture and norm conflicts
• PART III: Public memory, monuments and art forms
• PART IV: Public transgressions and artistic interventions
• Index