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Abstract: This essay argues that aesthetic works offer an understanding of the performativity of democratic protests and crowd action. It analyzes a handful of artworks from the Ukrainian Revolution of 2013–2014. The article demonstrates how aesthetic works express what may be termed political emergence: people who have no say in political institutions come together to change the political order. Aesthetic works enable an understanding of political emergence that is mostly unavailable to the social sciences, history, and journalism. The article contends that analysis of crowd action and twenty-first-century collective protest in particular would gain from theoretical and methodological efforts to conjoin social research and aesthetic analysis.

This essay explores the basis for dialogue at the junction of political theory, historical research and aesthetic analysis. It does so by making two claims. The first one concerns political emergence, which refers to movements that emerge outside democratic institutions and portend profound reorganizations of political order although they are not yet fully recognizable as political entities as they have weak political representation. The second claim implies that aesthetic presentations and performances (fiction, poetry, visual arts, film, theater) offer unique ways of understanding political emergence, and hence also collective protest, revolt and revolution. Artworks embody this potentiality because they register the experience of protests, not as representations of fixed historical agents, but in ways comparable to the testimonial mode of the participant and the witness in situations of social stress, struggle and political violence.

This essay represents an effort to rethink the relationship between political emergence and migrant agency. This undertaking has a theoretical motivation. Mainstream human and social sciences seem to be at an impasse because of their structural inability to interpret and explain systemic crises and contradictions. While this is a topic far too complex to be dealt with in a brief essay, the following pages will explore three expressions of this impasse. First, the social sciences often analyse migration without acknowledging its profound political implications. Second, European history and sociology rarely recognize histories of imperial dominance and anticolonial resistance as intrinsic to European history and society. Third, mainstream social and political theories often ignore the structural significance of collective protests and resistance movements for the realization of democracy. The article frames the analysis of these problems via two different theoretical contexts in which we can observe ongoing conceptual or methodological shifts or 'turns' that respond to the said impasse. In studies of democracy and citizenship there has thus been a clear turn toward 'borders'. In migration studies, there is a corresponding turn toward 'agency'. By analysing the interconnections between these theoretical contexts the article suggests ways of resolving the three problems at hand. It starts by examining the first one, or the inability to acknowledge the profound political implications of migration. This discussion will then offer an approach to the other two, concerning the legacies of colonialism and the significance of political agency and protest. ; Résumé Cet essai représente un effort pour repenser la relation entre migration et politique. La motivation d'un tel essai est théorique. Les sciences humaines et sociales classiques semblent se trouver dans une impasse en raison de leur incapacité structurelle à interpréter et à expliquer les crises et les contradictions systémiques. Bien que ce sujet soit beaucoup trop complexe pour être traité dans un bref essai, les pages suivantes explorent trois expressions de cette impasse. Premièrement, les sciences sociales analysent souvent la migration sans reconnaître ses profondes implications politiques. Deuxièmement, l'histoire et la sociologie européennes reconnaissent rarement les histoires de domination impériale et de résistance anticoloniale comme étant intrinsèques à l'histoire et à la société européennes. Troisièmement, les théories sociales et politiques traditionnelles ignorent souvent la portée structurelle des manifestations collectives et des mouvements de résistance pour la réalisation de la démocratie. Je vais articuler mon analyse de ces problèmes selon deux contextes théoriques différents dans lesquels nous pouvons observer des changements conceptuels ou méthodologiques en cours ou des « tournants » qui répondent à cette impasse. Dans les études sur la démocratie et la citoyenneté, on s'est donc clairement tourné vers les « frontières ». Dans les études sur les migrations, on assiste à un virage correspondant à « l'agence ». En analysant les interconnexions entre ces contextes théoriques, j'espère suggérer des moyens de résoudre les trois problèmes actuels. Je commence par examiner le premier, ou l'incapacité de reconnaître les profondes implications politiques de la migration. Cette discussion offrira ensuite une approche aux deux autres, concernant les héritages du colonialisme et la signification de la volonté politique et de la protestation. ; Resumen Este ensayo presenta un intento de repensar teóricamente la relación entre migración y política. Las corrientes dominantes en ciencias humanas y sociales parecen encontrarse en un callejón sin salida por su incapacidad estructural para interpretar y explicar las crisis sistémicas y sus contradicciones. Aunque se trata de un tema demasiado complejo para ser tratado en un ensayo breve, las siguientes páginas explorarán tres expresiones de la misma coyuntura. En primer lugar, las ciencias sociales suelen estudiar el fenómeno migratorio sin reconocer sus profundas implicaciones políticas. Segundo, la historia y la sociología europeas no acostumbran a tener en cuenta la historia de la dominación imperial y las resistencias anticoloniales como intrínsecas a la historia y la sociedad europeas. En tercer lugar, los enfoques hegemónicos de las teorías sociales y políticas tienden a ignorar la importancia estructural de las protestas colectivas y los movimientos de resistencia en la realización de la democracia. Enmarcaremos el análisis de estos problemas en dos contextos teóricos diferentes para observar los cambios o 'giros' conceptuales y metodológicos en curso. Los estudios sobre democracia y ciudadanía han sufrido un claro giro hacia las 'fronteras'. En los estudios sobre migraciones se constata el consiguiente giro hacia la noción de 'agencia'. Analizando las conexiones entre estos contextos teóricos sugeriré varias vías para resolver estos tres problemas. Comenzaré examinando la primera, consistente en la incapacidad de comprensión de las profundas implicaciones políticas de la migración. Esta discusión conduce a las otras dos vías, relativas al legado del colonialismo y el sentido de la agencia política y la protesta.

An essay on Robin Wagner-Pacifici's 'What Is and Event?' (2017). The essay argues that Wagner-Pacifici's book offers a platform from which it again becomes possible to rethink the relationship between system and transformation, and that this is precisely what the human and social sciences need if they are to retain their ability to critically interpret the dense fabric of late capitalist society and culture – a society of the spectacle if there ever was one, a world from heel to head made up by events. The essay assess Wagner-Pacifici's analytical apparatus of political semiosis, and it shows that aesthetics, and literary and visual interpretation, to a large extent explains why Wagner-Pacifici can make a tremendous contribution to a theory of political emergence. Finally, the essay argues that aesthetic theory offers an intersection where social theory and the theory of history may begin a new conversation about human agency, social change and historical experie

Stefan Jonsson reviews the traditional image conveyed by crowd theory – the crowd as 'dangerous, chaotic and unpleasant' – stressing the continuing and even renewed importance of crowd action today. According to Jonsson, if crowds inevitably raise the issue of the foundations of power, it is because their act is, in the horizon of modernity, an essentially politically constituent one.