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What is the sound of (not) knowing what is to be done, and what effects do expressions of knowingness or uncertainty have, especially on the formation of activist publics and their subsequent collective doings? This article explores a number of political discourses – from the right, left and centre – in the hopes of illuminating the sounds, affects and effects of (not) knowing what is to be done. In a world that has passed from 'actually existing socialism' to 'the end of history' to the Great Recession to the global rise of authoritarianism, how do progressive and left activists in the US navigate knowing and not knowing, certainty and its absence; what sorts of affects are produced by knowing, or not, what is to be done; what is opened, and foreclosed, with the genre of the blueprint as compared to the genre of the brainstorm; and what sorts of activist publics are formed thereby? Interested in how senses of political possibility and impossibility emerge and take hold, the article explores how, in the shadow of pronouncements by all manner of those who know what is to be done – from conservative, moderate and liberal establishmentarians to armchair activists and progressive or leftist scolds – activists inhabit uncertainty about what is to be done and figure out what to do even so.

Fifteen plus years into the 'emotional turn' in the study of contentious politics, the question is no longer 'do emotions matter' but rather 'do emotions evernotmatter?' Or, stated positively, can we grasp the phenomena that we group together under the name of collective political action without paying attention to feelings, emotions, affect? As others have argued, the factors that social movement scholars deem important for mobilisation – e.g. political opportunities, organisations, frames – have force precisely because of the feelings that they elicit, stir up, amplify, or dampen. We turn towards emotion, then, in order to understand the workings of the key concepts in the field. In addition, we need to explore feelings because they often are a primary catalyst or hindrance to political mobilisation, attenuating the role of other factors. Then there are the many other aspects of collective political action, beyond the question of mobilisation per se, where emotions play important roles, from ideological struggles to alliance formation to activist rituals to collective identity formation to community building. So, again, are emotions ever unimportant, are they ever a simply trivial aspect of what happens in and around contentious politics? Historians of emotion might take the argument further. If, as Rosenwein argues, 'emotions are about things judged important to us',2if emotions are indications of what matters, of what is valued and devalued, how can scholars interested inanyaspect of social lifenotconsider emotions?

Focusing on the street AIDS activist movement ACT UP, this article explores the question of social movement sustainability. Emotions figure centrally in two ways. First, I argue that the emotion work of movements, largely ignored by scholars, is vital to their ability to develop and thrive over time. I investigate the ways AIDS activists nourished and extended an "emotional common sense" that was amenable to their brand of street activism, exploring, for example, the ways in which ACT UP marshaled grief and tethered it to anger; reoriented the object of gay pride away from community stoicism and toward gay sexual difference and militant activism; transformed the subject and object of shame from gay shame about homosexuality to government shame about its negligent response to AIDS; and gave birth to a new "queer" identity that joined the new emotional common sense, militant politics, and sexradicalism into a compelling package that helped to sustain the movement. Second, I investigate the emotions generated in the heat of the action that also helped the street AIDS activist movement flourish into the early 1990s.

Examines factors promoting gay & lesbian involvement in militant public activism against acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) in the late 1980s & compares this participation to their earlier, more conventional engagement in interest-group politics. It is argued that the AIDS issue aroused intense emotions that shook gays out of their previous ambivalence toward issues related to their sexuality & their roles in society. External political opportunity factors are linked to internal emotional factors to explain homosexual political mobilization surrounding AIDS & gays' willingness to actively & militantly take their battle into the streets; illustrative examples are offered from Chicago (IL), San Francisco (CA), & New York City. A case study is offered of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT UP), the predominant organization of militant gays & lesbians against AIDS, detailing factors that led to its emergence & evolution. Implications for social movement theory in general, particularly regarding the salience of emotional factors, are discussed. K. Hyatt Stewart

Examines factors promoting gay & lesbian involvement in militant public activism against acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) in the late 1980s & compares this participation to their earlier, more conventional engagement in interest-group politics. It is argued that the AIDS issue aroused intense emotions that shook gays out of their previous ambivalence toward issues related to their sexuality & their roles in society. External political opportunity factors are linked to internal emotional factors to explain homosexual political mobilization surrounding AIDS & gays' willingness to actively & militantly take their battle into the streets; illustrative examples are offered from Chicago (IL), San Francisco (CA), & New York City. A case study is offered of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT UP), the predominant organization of militant gays & lesbians against AIDS, detailing factors that led to its emergence & evolution. Implications for social movement theory in general, particularly regarding the salience of emotional factors, are discussed. K. Hyatt Stewart

It is a pleasure to respond to such a thoughtful and insightful review of Moving Politics. Let me begin with Rafael de la Dehesa's suggestion that I may have overstated my challenge to the political opportunity model of social movement emergence. In arguing for the importance of bringing emotion into our analyses, I state that the task is not to consider feelings in isolation but rather as they articulate with more frequently studied factors that shape activism and movements, including political opportunities. Because feelings always play out in contexts, attention to them necessitates attention to the larger contexts in and through which they emerge and operate. In my view, one of the crucial insights that scholars in the political opportunity tradition make is that the larger political environment is a critical factor in movement emergence; we disagree, I believe, in our understandings of how that external context matters. The model's emphasis on the necessity of opening political opportunities for movement emergence, conveyed in its proponents' programmatic statements and suggested by the model's very name, precludes instances when movements arise in the face of tightly constricting opportunities, as occurred in the case of the AIDS movement. Even if, as de la Dehesa suggests, we were to understand ACT UP's emergence as an example of an existing movement shifting to more confrontational tactics in the face of institutional intransigence, the political opportunity model still comes up short: when the AIDS movement emerged in the early 1980s, AIDS and lesbian and gay activists faced tightly constricted opportunities. In light of the model's limitations, and after sorting through mountains of empirical material that revealed a dramatic shift in the prevailing emotional habitus in lesbian and gay communities during the period of ACT UP's emergence, it seemed like a focus on emotion would help illuminate how the external political environment affects movement processes.