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If there is one thing that people agree about concerning the massive, leaderless, spontaneous protests that have spread across the globe over the past decade, it's that they were failures. Simply put, the protesters could not organize; nor could they formulate clear demands or bring about change. 'In the Street' argues that in seeking to find the reasons behind these alleged 'failures,' we are asking the wrong questions. It argues that when our analysis of such events is confined by a framework of success and failure, we blind ourselves to the working reality of democratic politics, namely the on-the-ground efforts of political actors who, in becoming 'political friends,' demonstrate, if for a fleeting moment, that another way of being together is possible.

AbstractIn 2016, as the Turkish military's "security operations" targeting Kurdish towns in southeastern Turkey were in full swing, a series of disturbing photographs began to appear on social media. The photographs, which showed soldiers posing in front of derelict houses covered with graffiti written only a few moments before, had an almost "playful" quality to them whereby the act of killing was presented as an object of amusement. To achieve this effect, those who shot the photographs appropriated certain aesthetic practices of resistance, specifically the use of street art by protest movements in Turkey. This article calls the appropriation of these practices and their presentation in the photographs "the grotesque mimicry of joyful dissent." The photographs' mimicry seeks to serve multiple, and seemingly contradictory, purposes including the erasure of the memory of both the atrocities that were being committed at the time and the former struggles against the regime. What lies underneath this project of erasure and becomes visible in the photographs' display of power is the instability and fragility of the regime's violent rule, both within the region, which it treats as an internal colony, and beyond.

This book examines the role of civilizations in the context of the existing and possible world orders from a cross-cultural perspective. Seeking to clarify the meaning of such complex and contested notions as "civilization," "order," and "world order," it takes into account political, economic, cultural, and philosophical dimensions of social life.