Squares in movement

South Atlantic Quarterly

Volumn 111, Issue 3, 2012, Pages 585-596

  Stavrides, Stavros ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84864327509     PISSN: 00382876     EISSN: 15278026     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00382876-1596308     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. Stavros Stavrides, "The December 2008 Youth Uprising in Athens: Spatial Justice in an Emergent 'City of Thresholds'," Spatial Justice 2 (2010): www.jssj.org/archives/02/media/public-space-vo2.pdf.
2. One of the early examples of such practices was the "pasalo" mobilizations in Barcelona and Madrid on March 13, 2004: During the "night of the short messages," people exchanged messages that would overthrow a government. "Liars murderers. Your war our dead. Pasalo [Pass it on]": this message was circulated the day before general elections and accused the government of systematically hiding from the people the reasons behind the 2004 Madrid bombings. Huge demonstrations occupied the central squares in Barcelona and Madrid, as these were defined by the messages of protesters as meeting points. In this process, information ("they are not telling us the truth") addressed people as potential actors. Information thus acquired a power to mobilize people through sharing and participation. See Manuel Castells, Jack Linchuan Qiu, Mireia Fernandez-Ardevol, and Araba Sey, Mobile Communication and Society: A Global Perspective (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007).
3. Christos Giovanopoulos and Dimitris Mitropoulos, Democracy under Construction (in Greek) (Athens: A/synexeia Editions, 2011), 278.
4. The idea of communities in movement echoes Raúl Zibechi's "societies in movement," describing collective practices and events that go beyond the usual definition of social movements. See Raúl Zibechi, Autonomías y emancipaciones: América Latina en movi-miento (Lima: Univ. San Marcos y Bajo Tierra, 2007);
5. and Zibechi, Dispersing Power. Social Movements as Anti-State Forces (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010).
6. "Common space," according to Marcel Hénaff and Tracy B. Strong, "admits no criteria; it is open to all in the same way. It is not owned or controlled⋯. all can go there to extract from it what is there." Marcel Hénaffand Tracy B. Strong, Public Space and Democracy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 4. This is more or less an understanding of common space as preexisting its social uses (including its potential enclosure), whereas here common space is primarily and necessarily considered as a social artifact created through practices of space commoning.
7. See also Gigi Roggero, "Five Theses on the Common," Rethinking Marxism 22, no. 3 (2010): 357-73, 361-63.
8. For a discussion that compares public and common space, see M. De Angelis and Stavros Stavrides, "Beyond Markets or States: Commoning as Collective Practice (a public interview)," An Architektur, no. 23 (2010): 4-27, esp. 12; www.e-flux.com/journal/view/150.
9. Jacques Rancière, Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics (London: Continuum, 2010), 59.
10. Stavros Stavrides, Towards the City of Thresholds (Trento: Professionaldreamers, 2010), 18.
11. Rancière, Dissensus, 32-33.
12. Manifesto, ¡Democracia real YA! www.democraciarealya.es/manifiesto- comun/manifesto-english/ (accessed February 5, 2012).
13. Patras Real Democracy (blog), patras-democracy.blogspot.com/search/label/ %CE%A3%CF%85%CE%BD%CE%AD%CE%BB%CE%B5%CF%85%CF%83%CE%B7 (accessed February 5, 2012). Patras city aganaktismeni posted their General Assembly decisions and discussions at the site. For Syntagma Square General Assembly resolutions,
14. see Real Democracy (blog), real-democracy.gr/content/poioi-eimaste-1 (accessed February 9, 2012).
15. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 165.
16. Hardt and Negri clearly insist that today "labor cannot be limited to waged labor but must refer to human creative capacities in all their generality." Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2004), 105. Virno believes that "the dividing line between Work and Action [poiesis and praxis]⋯ has now disappeared altogether."
17. Paolo Virno, "Virtuosity and Revolution: The Political Theory of Exodus," in Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics, ed. Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 189-222, 190. Virno also states, "There is no longer anything which distinguishes labor from the rest of human activities."
18. Paolo Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2004), 102. There is, however, a movement that opposes the continuing entrapment of creative action by the logic of capital, which can be recognized in the square's commoning experiences. Perhaps it is more appropriate to speak of a potential temporary emancipation of "doing" in the prospect of an "anti-politics of dignity" as theorized by John Holloway.
19. John Holloway, Crack Capitalism (London: Pluto, 2010), 245-249;
20. and John Holloway, Change the World without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today (London: Pluto, 2002).
21. Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community, trans. Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
22. Hardt and Negri, Multitude, 100.