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”GRAB THE SYSTEM BY ITS PROVERBIAL BALLS WHEN IT LEAST EXPECTS IT!”
Occupy Wall Street, social media, and the new choreographing of political protest
Tiina Rättilä, University of Tampere, [email protected]
Jarmo Rinne, University of Helsinki, [email protected]
Paper to be presented at the Italian Political Science Association’s Annual Conference
Università Roma Tre, Facoltà di Scienze Politiche, Dipartimento di Studi Internazionali e
Dipartimento di Istituzioni publiche, Economia e Società
September 13-15, 2012
Draft, please do not cite or distribute without permission.
1. Introduction
Year 2011 will go down in history for the appearance of certain unexpected chains of events in
unanticipated circumstances. In addition to the revolutions that shook the Arab dictatorships, the
world was stunned by the Occupy movement which triggered off global rebellion against
neoliberal economic politics. The movement started in Madrid, Spain, in May 2011 when a
group of people calling themselves indignad@as organized a mass demonstration and the
occupation of the city’s central public square Porta del Sol. On September 17th, a few hundred
activists took over the Zuccotti Park (renamed as Liberty Park by the occupiers) in the vicinity of
New York’s Wall Street and set up there a campsite. In the next few weeks this movement,
widely known as Occupy Wall Street (from now on Occupy), became a worldwide phenomenon.
In October citizens occupied parks, squares, and streets in over 80 countries. Camps were built in
e.g. Athens, London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. Occupations soon generated an intense
skirmish in public discussion and a weeks-long struggle between the occupiers and political
authorities. By winter most of the camp sites were expelled by the police, often violently.
Hundreds of occupiers were arrested, and new encampments were forbidden.1 Since then the
movement has turned to various other means of displaying their critique, like occupying banks
and foreclosed homes (see Pinto 2012).
1
Since the fall of 2011 more than 7000 occupiers have been arrested in the US alone. See OccupyArrests.com for
updated information on arrests and jailings.
2
Occupy is about a broadly based protest against growing income inequalities, the power of
finance market, and the greed of big corporations (see Declaration of the Occupation of New
York City Sept. 29, 2011). Occupiers have also criticized the handling of the euro crisis and cuts
in public spending, opposed political corruption, and demanded better democracy. Occupations
have everywhere caused fierce public debate both in traditional media and on the net forums.
Critics have accused Occupy, for example, for lack of realistic agenda, for returning to socialism,
and for employing inefficient means of action. Supporters, in contrast, have taken Occupy as
something like a rebirth of social movements. It has been considered as an unexpected but
welcome phenomenon in circumstances where the power of neoliberal economic and political
discourse had seemed almost insurmountable. (See discussion e.g. in Žižek 2011; Krugman
2011; Chomsky 2011)
Occupy has generated huge interest among social scientists as well. Research has paid attention
not only to the ascent of the movement and its agenda (the possibilities of which many doubt),
but to its action repertoire and relationship to prior social movements. A lot of interest has
focused on the role of ICTs and social media in Occupy’s success. Research has demonstrated
that for example Facebook and Twitter were exploited extensively in disseminating information
about the movement and in organization of its activities (Theocharis & García-Albacete 2012;
Tufekci & Wilson 2012; Papacharissi & Oliveira 2012; Juris 2012; Bennett & Segerberg 2012).
Such findings are compatible with assessments which stress the growing importance of ICTs for
political protests and mobilisations. Researchers, activists, and policy-makers alike share the
view that ICTs are in many ways crucial to the future of advanced societies. Computers, cell
phones, and other mobile communication devices are almost indispensable for everyday life,
social and political. On the other hand, there is an ongoing debate about the effects of new
technologies, especially as to whether or not they are changing the identity and underlying
process of social movements and what is their contribution to democratic participation. (See
discussion in Mercea 2011)
In this paper we take part in this discussion on a move general level, thinking over some
prominent features of Occupy which illustrate today’s movement and protest politics.2 Our
interpretation of Occupy and other upcoming political mobilisations relies, in part, on familiar
2
Our discussion is based mainly on material related to the American Occupy, including several net articles on the
movement by well-known social critics such as Slavoj Žižek, Paul Krugman, and Noam Chomsky.
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ideas such as postmodern theory, but partly it introduces some new theoretical and conceptual
openings. The main purpose of our theoretical bricolage is to get a hold of the disrupting and
‘surprise producing’ nature of mobilisations like Occupy. Our argument is that surprises and
performative disruption are some of the defining characteristics of today’s ‘vireal’ (one of the
new concepts we are proposing, referring to the close intertwining of virtual/real communication
and interaction; cf. Juris 2012) political activism which are changing protest movements’
political ‘choreographies’ (another concept we find useful in comparing present protest action
with earlier forms). What is notable about the choreographies of the new movements is the way
they play with different spatial and temporal opportunities and hybridized ways of action. Even
if physical protests in public spaces are still focal for protest movements, they tend to come with
certain practical and political-strategic problems (see Calhoun 2011; Moore 2011; Pinto 2012).
The endurance and success of protests relies very rarely on just physical expressions. They have
always required a temporal dimension as well; otherwise they would not have been able to attract
much public attention and recognition or to exert pressure on institutional politics. But before the
new opportunities brought along by the digital technologies and the internet, especially the social
networking sites, protests’ spatial-temporal leeway was much narrower. The digitalisation of
communication and the expansion of virtual (networked, connective) action space have
significantly increased possibilities to play with different temporalities and circumvent the
problems related to physical protests. In this process, the current milieu of political action and
participation has fractured into a diverse and complex multi-spatial/temporal universe of many
actors, levels, forms, and forums. This breeds new complex protest choreography the quality of
which we discuss later on in the paper.
2. Digital media in the study of social movements and political participation
For nearly two decades research on political protests, social movements, and democracy has
been greatly interested in the internet and its potential to enhance political participation and
organization. Numerous accounts have been offered, with mixed results and appraisals, on the
ways the internet has influenced movement mechanisms. Overall agreement exists that
digitalization of communication has enabled easier and faster distribution of information and
networking by individuals with hitherto unimaginable numbers of people, locally and globally,
for social and political purposes. Moreover, most believe that when new diverse means of
spreading information become available, information itself will also multiply and diversify,
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which opens up new opportunities for political involvement (Hands 2010; Chadwick 2007;
Mosca 2010; Pasek et al. 2009; Bentivegna 2006; Walgrave et al. 2011).
However, there is still notable controversy among researchers about how far one can go with
conclusions about the actual effects of the new technologies. Here, Jennifer Earl and Katrina
Kimport (2011) make a useful distinction between supporters of ’supersize’ and ’theory 2.0’
argument. The former argue that the use of ICTs for protest purposes increases the size, speed,
and reach of action while having only little effect on the underlying processes of activism. The
latter believe, instead, that the use of ICTs may truly change movement organization and
participation and that, in result, we should be ready to rethink our existing views and theories of
political activism. (See also Mercea 2011; Tufekci & Wilson 2012; Harlow 2012). Here the
contention is that political participation is undergoing a profound change and that the internet,
especially, as a tool, channel, and forum for citizen initiated communication and action should be
changing weightily our understanding of the current social and political realities. Researchers
also dispute about how conducive the use of ICTs is to democratic aims, whether or not it
increases political participation, and whether net participation improves the quality of
democracy. Appraisals are indecisive here as well. Some think net participation complements the
practices of representation and improves the state of democracy. Others argue that there is only
scarce if any evidence towards such effects. (E.g. Sunstein 2001; Hodkinson 2007; Theocharis &
García-Abacete 2012)
Yet, regardless how the effects of ICTs and social media for democracy are judged, it is evident
that they have changed the traditional requisites of political mobilization, participation costs,
nature and form of collectivity, and action repertoires (e.g. van Laer & van Aelst 2010;
Chadwick 2007, 2012). In the non-hierarchical, unstructured, and constantly changing internet
environment, political action and its effects are derived from motives which may have very little
to do with traditional explanations of collective mobilisations. For example, Dean Rohlinger et
al. (2009) have argued that the ease of participation, the looser sense of connection and
commitment, and the flexibility of getting involved in protest action through online avenues,
boosts movements because they allow people to turn their participation on and off depending on
when they can or wish to participate. Such features have fostered the evolution of weaker and
more flexible forms of social ties, enabling activists to extend and more effectively manage their
social networks and affiliate with distant groups (Bennett et al. 2008; Chadwick 2012; Häyhtiö &
Rinne 2008; Rinne 2012).
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The intensive exploitation of digital media in communication, organization, and coordination of
protests has also been registered in the context of the 2011 mobilisations. Yannis Theocharis and
Gema García-Albacete (2012) examined Twitter messaging in M15 protests in Greece and Spain
and the Occupy protests in the US, noticing that it played a significant role in creation of social
awareness and meaningful narration of the protests and their causes, thereby facilitating their
popularization. Likewise, social media entertained a crucial position in the rise of the Arab
spring and M15 protests. Zeynep Tufekci and Christopher Wilson (2012) found that Facebook
constituted one of the primary channels through which people in Egypt learned about and
developed motivation to join the protests in Cairo’s Tahriri Square. Zizi Papacharissi & Maria de
Fatima Oliveira (2012) analysed the features of Twitter as a media in the protests in Egypt,
noticing that it blurred boundaries between journalistic news, opinionating of various parties, and
emotion, and created more affective and hybridized form of non-profesional reporting which is
much more appealing and motivating to net activists than traditional journalism.
The significance of the internet and social media for all these protests is underlined also by the
way political authorities reacted to their popularity among protesters. Both authoritarian regimes
and western governments have tried to impose limitations on the use of the internet. E.g. the
Mubarak government carried out a few days internet blackout by literally switching it off, and in
the Cameron government considered turning off social networks during the fall 2011 riots in
London and elsewhere in the UK. Similar restrictions and denials of the internet service have
been planned and carried out in many other countries as well (e.g. in Russia, China, and Iran), so
far with varying success.
Research around ICTs and Occupy has so far focused mainly on functional and instrumental
aspects, looking into how activists have exploited the new technologies to communicate their
views and action plans. Our perspective in this paper starts from a slightly different and more
theoretical focus. We are not as much interested in who uses social media and whether it
enhances political organization and democratic participation as in what is the nature of this
movement and action which weaves together elements equally from the ‘real’ and the ‘virtual’
world, living, breathing, and acting simultaneously in both. We are asking, what kind of
‘movement’ and ‘choreography’ this kind of action engenders and how it differs from earlier
forms of movements and protest politics. Our interest requires that we look beyond single protest
events and singled out communications and take a more strategic view of how political
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mobilizations like Occupy are changing the character and practices of social movement politics.
While our interest is foremostly theoretical, we also utilize empirical observations in conjunction
with our theoretical interpretations.
3. Postmodern political resistance
Occupy features several characteristics which are typical for today’s ‘from below’ political
activity. We should be aware of, however, that these features are not the product of the 2011
mobilisations and that they have predecessors in movement and theoretical traditions. Occupy
can, we argue, be understood in terms of postmodern theory, although it represents
postmodernism in a heightened sense. ICTs and the new social networking sites have brought
into politics opportunities and elements which 1980’s theorists and actors could hardly imagine.
Such features include: a) experimenting with different combinations of the personal and the
collective, b) influencing society in cultural rather than in outright political terms, c)
participatory dramaturgy of political action, and d) performativity.
a) Occupy (in New York) was originally one person’s (Adbusters’ chief editor Kalle Lash) idea
and initiative which started to circulate on the internet in the summer of 2011, exciting quickly a
number of interested people to take part in its evolution. According to Jarmo Rinne (2011), this
is typical for postmodern reflexive politics in which individual actors take personal responsibility
of society’s problems and assume ‘do-it-yourself’ action to do something about them.
Postmodern mobilization is typically personal(ised) action which takes critical stand to the
earlier top-down form of electoral democracy. This ‘new politics’ is based on people’s own
interpretative frames and self-initiated practices through which they are trying to win back their
authenticity and autonomy. Political initiatives are made and action commenced in the name of
‘personal truth’ and of becoming ‘who one really is,’ even if it is uncertain whether they interest
other people and attract support from them. Political projects and campaigns can pop up anytime
anywhere, even in unlikely social and political circumstances (like in the Arab dictatorships or in
the USA where the neoliberal economic and political discourse had for years appeared
invincible).
The personal nature of postmodern politics does not prevent collective action but it does change
its character and forms. Here the success of political initiatives requires that one can find at least
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a few other individuals who are interested in the same problematic and who are willing to
campaign together even if they come from very different social and political backgrounds (this
has taken place in all Occupy mobilisations across countries; see e.g. García & Espín 2012).
Current mobilisations often make ‘strange bedfellows,’ as manifested already in the 1999 Seattle
demonstrations (e.g. Lappalainen 2000; Shepard & Hayduk 2002). At times personal initiatives
produce only temporary swarming around them, as is often the case on the internet (Häyhtiö &
Rinne 2006, 2008), but they can also develop into longer term projects and networks which link
with prior networks and act, in turn, as a basis of experience and contact for future mobilisations.
The logic of postmodern mobilisations differs from traditional collective formations like parties
whose subsistence is based but on their general purpose, program, and organization. Conversely,
postmodern mobilisations do not rely on ideologies and organizational commitments but
emphasize individuals’ own capacity to act and get along. A movement stays alive only as long
as participants feel their action is meaningful. When action loses its sense, it will not be carried
on due to some outside purpose like sustaining the organization for its own sake. Not
surprisingly, postmodern movements have often spawned uncertainty among scholars of
democracy. Many of them wonder if such action is at all collective in nature (cf. Micheletti’s,
2003, argument about ‘individualized collective action’3) and whether it suffices to constitute a
close enough community to support democratic decision-making and governance in the future.
(See Rättilä 2012, esp. chapter 6) On the other hand, it is also possible to argue that, thanks to the
internet and the social media, the new individualized political empowerment actually increases
more reciprocal and interactive relations between citizens, and that this might turn out to be the
long-sought cure for the lurking political apathy of the advanced western societies.
b) Many were astonished by Occupy’s swift success in politicizing a problem that had angered
so many people but that had not yet received intelligible public articulation to become an easily
communicable subject for political discussion. Politicization produced a sudden turn in public
discussion when the “99%” discourse was assumed in general use. “99%” acted as a
comprehensible symbol for all that complicated power play and economic policy that had
3
Micheletti’s notion is meant to characterize different forms of political consumerism. According to Micheletti, the
market is an arena for citizen-consumers where they can act both individually as well as in groups. Personal concerns,
responsibility-taking, and subjective choices motivate political consumerist projects whereby individuals make
particular choices in the market and when joined by other similar choices by other individuals, they will bring about real
and more far-reaching effects for how the market works. A precondition for the accumulation of consumerist conflicts
is the existence of diverse public spheres which enable the emergence of loose networks around politicized issues.
(Micheletti 2003, 14-36)
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generated the 2008 housing bubble, mortgage crisis, financial crisis, finance institutions’
credibility crisis and, increasingly, the crisis of political legitimacy. (E.g. Michael Moore 2011;
Stiglitz 2011)
The discursive turn Occupy triggered is consistent with interpretations which take it that
postmodern politics has more to with cultural and aesthetic influence than with influence on
political decision-making (Lattunen 2007). Postmodern movements frequently deem affecting
everyday habits and patterns of thought more effective than appealing to the political system.
Therefore, movement actors have taken the habit of talking to people in the streets, bringing into
public spaces visually impacting campaigns, and putting up captivating public performances, so
as to display political problems concretely in people’s ‘face’ (and bodies). Postmodern
mobilisations like to bypass, when possible, the official political system and experiment with
communication which comes close to people’s ‘skin,’ to the sphere of their immediate
experience.
This sort of sentient action, which appeals to bodies as well as minds approaches, in some views,
postmodern and avant-gardist deconstructionist art (see Hutcheon 1990; Lattunen 2003). Public
performances, such as street carnivals, demonstrations, and occupations (of streets, highways,
parks, buildings) are often closer to environmental and participatory art than politics in the
traditional sense. One of the typical characteristics of performance art and politics (which also
shows in Occupy) is their tendency to experiment with public space(s) in ways that defy existing
norms (see Ridell et al. 2009). Performative mobilisations deliberately take distance to the
authorized uses of public space (e.g. for politicians’ election campaigns) which habitually
construe participants as objects and audiences rather than as actors and makers of their own
right. Postmodern mobilisations extend the limits of participation by bringing into public view
noticeable difference, alternative forms of community, fun, and ‘disorderly order’; in other
words, they exercise the same kind of ‘detournement’ tactics that the 1960s’ Situationists
employed to interrupt everyday life and routines and create room for social and political critique.
(Plant 1992; see also Chaloupka 199; Shepard 2011; St John 2008)
Postmodern political action comes with propensity to tease and provoke those in power. They
purposely test authorities’ tolerance, which has throughout history proven an effective way of
challenging existing order. Jessica Kulynych (1997, 334) notes that protesters place themselves
in the margins of communication, “utilizing puns and jokes and caricature to “expose” the limits
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of what is being said.” In Peter Sloterdijk’s (1987) terms, protesters appear as ‘Kynics’ (not
cynics) who ridicule and mock power holders, reminding them that their power is not
everlasting. Political order is only a contingent construction which can be challenged and
changed when judged necessary.
According to Kenneth Tucker (2005), public displays from fashion statements to dramatic
demonstrations construct different cultural styles and alternative forms of participation, politics
which is at least as much about public presentation of political agencies as about rational
discourse. ICTs and social media only accentuate this feature of postmodern agency. New
subjectivities build themselves by autonomously mapping, interpreting, and framing political
situations and impinging on the political world in sometimes rather eccentric ways. “Like worker
and populist movements of the past, they offer the possibility of breaking into history with
something new and ‘turning the world upside down’” (op.cit., 47-48).
c) The extensive attention Occupy received and its fast outbreak in the US and around the world
would not have been possible without skill to ‘show’ and dramatize the 99% discourse in public,
that is, without turning it into a public story which appeals to the public. In order to be
successful, today’s political stories require dramaturgy which motivates individuals to take part
in the action and allows them become empowered through their own engagement. All social and
political action comes, of course, with narrative elements. Traditional institutions, too, build their
position and power through narration and performance. The triumph of postmodern movements’
political stories depends, however, on the kind of role they offer to (any) individual actors. If
what are available are only bystanders’ roles, people are most likely not interested in
participating.
This feature conveys something essential about the character and problems of contemporary
politics, namely, how to make people believe that they can influence society and that political
engagement is not only worthwhile but can also be fun. All upcoming mobilisations, Occupy
notwithstanding, must be able to cross this fundamental threshold. On the other hand, internet
and social media have clearly made entry into political action, and devising political narratives,
much easier. Due to the new social media technologies, political movements’ dramaturgy is now
much more participatory than it was years or decades ago. Personalized social networking sites
enable sharing easily adoptable ideas (such as ‘we are the 99%’) that require little or no
persuasion or reasoning to appeal to people. Thus, personal social sites provide symbolic
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packages (memes) for people to share, imitate, and adopt as an element of their (however
temporal and substitutive) individual identity as participants in a movement, and their common
understanding of the movement’s collective identity. (Juris 2012; Bennett & Segerberg 2012)
From this dramaturgical point of view, it was important for Occupy to stress from the beginning
the utmost democraticness and openness of its decision-making. It became known for making all
movement related decisions in ‘people’s assemblies’ open for all occupiers on the site. Anybody
can participate, all voices are heard, and no decisions are prepared in the ‘cabinets.’ (How well
these ideas work in practice is, of course, a different thing; see e.g. Pinto 2012 ) Anybody or any
group can, moreover, set up his/her own occupation, as long as the action adheres to direct
democratic principles. Another, more complicated and hierarchical, way or organizing would
most likely not have attracted as much attention and involvement.
Social movements have throughout their history pursued democratic reforms and worked to
extend both the scope and the accessibility of democratic participation. The 2011 mobilisations,
too, have profiled themselves as aspiring to reform democracy, and not just the representative
system but the whole democratic way of life, implementing ‘Democracia Real Ya!’, as the
Spanish M15 activists have declared. But what separates the older and newer movements is the
latter’s effort to individualize democracy. As pointed out already, postmodern mobilisations try
to circumvent the representative system which is regarded not only rigid and inefficient but,
more seriously, as part of the problem itself. (Harcourt 2011; Hardt & Negri 2011) Politics today
is so closely entwined with economic power and the market that it has lost a good part of its
responsiveness and legitimacy in the eyes of citizens. People’s everyday experience is that the
system protects itself and the interests of the elites rather than ordinary citizens. It is in this spirit
that Occupy has criticized issues like financial institutions’ bailouts, CEOs’ million dollar
bonuses, and political corruption. Political decision-makers may look at such questions
differently, but among ordinary citizens experiences like these have greatly motivated support
for Occupy.
To many postmodern movements the principle of representation itself seems outdated. They
believe that people are capable of both ‘representing themselves’ and cooperating with others
(see Rättilä 2001). Occupy, for one, does not think it a problem that it has no one voice and
representative bodies. It has worked hard to keep doors open to different opinions and
participants and thereby show skeptics that democracy can work this way, too. Bernard Harcourt
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(2011) finds Occupy so significant a political phenomenon that he thinks it represents a
completely new ‘political paradigm.’
d) It has been essential for all this, politicization and dramatization of the problem,
empowerment of participants, and democraticness of decision-making, that Occupy had the
ability to make itself publicly visible. Like postmodern mobilisations in general, Occupy is a
characteristically performative movement. Jessica Kulynych (1997) has outlined in an interesting
way postmodern political participation as ‘performative resistance.’ Her sketch is useful because
it brings together many of the features discussed above and offers a general theoretical
framework for interpreting postmodern movements.
Kulynych starts from the observation that the traditional, system centered way of explaining
political participation is not feasible in contemporary world already because that system itself
has become extremely complex, statified, and technical. Participation in such system is neither
motivating nor easy. Perhaps unexpectedly, Kulynych finds especially Jürgen Habermas’s
thinking fitting for approaching and understanding the postmodern conditions of political
participation. She is not, however, referring to that Habermas who has become known for his
theory of communicative rationality and universal ethics, but to the newer Habermas who
emphasizes the democratic role of ‘discursive participation’ outside formal political structures.
Discursive participation is about public discussions which “uncover topics of relevance to all of
society, interpret values, contribute to the resolution of problems, generate good reasons, and
debunk bad ones” (Habermas 1992, 452). Moreover (and this Kulynych thinks is a radical idea),
it is important for democracy that informal public discussions are able to “amplify the pressure
of problems, that is, not only detect and identify problems but also convincingly and influentially
thematize them, furnish them with possible solutions, and dramatize them in such a way that they
are taken up and dealt with by parliamentary complexes” (Habermas 1996, 359). In Kulynych’s
interpretation, Habermas’s redefinitions of democracy and communication allow approaching
discursive participation as performances and presentations, the aim of which is not to make
‘validity statements’ but to disrupt powerful social and political conventions and suggest
alternatives to them.
Kulynych links Habermas’s discursive participation to Michel Foucault’s notions of power and
resistance. Foucault’s conception of power (e.g. Foucault 1977; Foucault 1980) is important
because, in distinction to many other conceptions, he sees power as a relation (and struggle)
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between social and political forces. In this sense, power is not one-dimensional but a
multidimensional and multidirectional relation in which actors make tactical moves and
countermoves and in which power always faces resistance as well. Therefore, even if
postmodern society constantly categorizes, normalizes, and monitors individuals inside out, this
power is never complete. People frequently oppose power, defy given categories, and behave
indecently. The same logic applies, on many levels, for ICTs and the internet. There is an
ongoing struggle, on the one hand, between different actors, forces, and interests as to who
control the new technologies and how freely (or not) people are allowed to move and act on the
net. On the other hand, the net frequently features struggles over more specified issues and
projects, exploiting various digital repertoire (e.g. virtual sit-ins, hacking into institutional
websites, pranking with websites’ contents, creating fake sites for celebrities, publishing video
footage on political authorities’ cockup statements and behavior, bypassing or breaking
copyright laws, and so forth) to show their resistance and ‘ill-behaving.’ It has proved impossible
to control discussions, politicking, and networking on the net. (See e.g Häyhtiö & Rinne 2008)
William Chaloupka (1993) introduces an idea which complements Kulynych’s conception of
protest participation as performative disruption. According to Chaloupka, a protester does not
present rational arguments or appeal to universal truths but strives to ‘demonstrate’ (French
demontrer, montrer) the contingent nature of the existing order (we referred to a similar idea
above). He talks about a different kind of political communication, rhetoric of demonstration.
Demonstration in Chaloupka’s outline is not a mere speech act stating something about reality or
representing an object. Rather, it performs the thing/action it refers to. Occupy, too, has acted
demonstratively in this sense, ‘making’ and ‘showing’ the desired results through occupiers’ own
action, through for example occupying foreclosed homes, selling local food directly from
produces to consumers, experimenting with local currency, living ‘direct democratic’ life in
occupation camps and so forth. It wants to be an example of activity which is ‘by the people’
instead of ‘for the people.’ As one Occupier notes, "I don't identify as an anarchist. But some of
the anarchist principles that manifest in Occupy are empowering: the fact that we use democracy
to make our decisions; that we don't want to make compromises just to have political impact. We
feel like we're creating another world just in the way that we're interacting with each other."
(Citation in Pinto 2012)
Likewise, current net communication and politics are increasingly demonstrative. This is both
because social media replicate and disseminate offline protests and performances on the net, and
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because the sites and profiles are in themselves ever more performative in employing flashy
symbolic, visual, and audio elements and narratives which challenge and ridicule existing social
and political norms (see Rättilä 2008).
Rhetoric of demonstration is often playful and ‘cheeky.’ It targets the institutional order
criticized for its tendency to control people already by determining ‘who’ they are and where
they can be/show up (e.g., young people should be at school, not in the mall; citizens should be
at home, not dance in the streets; poor people should stay in suburbs, not show up in downtown
business district, and so on; see Ranciere 1999, 2006). Protesters challenge such definitions and
categorizations and occupy exactly those locations where they are not supposed to show up, just
like Occupy took over the Zuccotti park and built there its own way of life, right in the face of
the Wall Street economic elite and political power. Chaloupka (op.cit., 144) notes fittingly that
demonstrators are more “Charlie Chaplin than Locke or Mill, more cinema than physics, more
play – dangerous, self-obliterating play, to be sure – than ideology.”
The performative principle is, then, quite essential for postmodern political action. According to
Kylynych (op.cit., 336), in our privatized world it is often only acts of performative resistance
which are capable of creating meaningful citizenship. The significance of the performative style
of action lies especially in its ability to disrupt routines and social-political categorizations (della
Porta et al. 2006; for the effects of such disruption in the Occupy’s context, see Krugman 2011).
Power mechanisms will not, of course, change easily, but what critical mobilizations like
Occupy can attempt to do is to interrupt those mechanisms by getting in their way, if only for a
moment. (For an extensive discussion on such ‘performative politics,’ see Rättilä 2012)
4. Choreographing ’vireal’ political protest
One of our central arguments is that Occupy should be understood as an example of upcoming
type of political movements where online and offline activities are intimately entwined. This is
why we have suggested the term ‘vireal’ politics as an expression of political activity which
‘takes place’ indiscriminately in physical as well as in virtual reality. For vireal politics, both are
natural spaces of action. The concept wants to demonstrate that it may no longer be meaningful
to pose the question of the relationship between politics and ICTs in terms of whether and to
what extent the latter is ‘being used’ by political actors and movements. Asking the question this
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way makes the presumption that ‘real-life’ political action and the new communication
technologies are different phenomena and gives the latter only instrumental value. Today this
understanding is rapidly becoming obsolete and the customary term ‘information and
communication technologies’ outdated (cf. Bimber’s argument 2000). ICTs are no longer simply
technologies which open up new opportunities and channels of communication. It is fairer to
denote them as a parallel world aside the ‘real’ one (which, moreover, are becoming increasingly
entangled and ubiquitous) and recognize that a growing number of people live and act in both
worlds simultaneously. This is how also Occupy has ‘lived and acted’ (for a good reason, we
might add).
We would also like to suggest the term ‘political choreography’ as a conceptual tool for grasping
the nature of vireal politics. When we think, for instance, about Occupy’s political choreography,
it is not difficult to detect the importance for it of jesting with various spatial and temporal
political tactics. This has made the movement rather extraordinary and unpredictable; arguably,
its success has to a good extent relied on its ability to produce surprising political moments and
situations, and it is this ‘production of surprises’ that we have wanted to understand more closely
in this paper. However, playing and politicking with an element of surprise is, as such, nothing
new in social movement tradition, it is rather an essential feature of postmodern politics as we
have argued above. Yet, ICTs and social media have notably increased possibilities for surprise
tactics, and this is something we should take note of more carefully in research.
In dance studies, where the term originates in, choreography refers to the art of inventing and
composing series of movements by arranging the physical expressions of the body or bodies to
form some kind of coordinated pattern. But choreography can be understood more generally, as
an integral part of our social world not restricted to aesthetics and art. Movement – literally – is
key to our identification of our environment, argues Jaana Parviainen (2010). We compose and
follow choreographies in order to organize and arrange the world (animate and inanimate, social
and political) around us, to render it physically and intellectually ‘sensible’ for the purposes of
life and action. Parviainen (op.cit.) defines choreography as all activities and events in which
movement appears as meaningful interaction and relations between various agents, including a
plan for the action, the action itself, and all the agents it draws together. She uses choreography
to analyse acts of political resistance, claiming that political scientists and social movement
scholars have for too long focused on ‘movement’ in metaphorical and ideological sense and
neglected the power of activists’ and protesters’ real bodies and their gestures and postures. Like
15
Sheller (2001), Parviainen thinks that ‘social movement,’ as exchange of information and
proximity and flow in space, is intrinsically connected to actual movements of people. If we fail
to take this actuality of bodily presence and motion into account, we cannot really understand
what ’social’ and ’movement’ really mean for those involved in the activity or what and how the
movement signifies for ’others’ (political adversaries and authorities).
However, Parviainen’s focus is on concrete, physical body movement in a given situation. She
analyses how protesters’ movements relate to the environment and inter/act with it and what
effects this inter/action has for other elements in the environment (how, for instance, spectators
and passers-by react to the protest). In this paper, we employ choreography a bit differently, as a
more general notion of coordinated acts and movements. We see actions and protests, like those
of Occupy, as collectively composed motion and moves, including both physical movement as
well as overall strategic and tactical moves in the ‘game’ (or struggle) of politics. Moreover,
unlike in traditional dance performance, while protest choreography may have one originator, he
or she who made the initiative, when the action starts, the choreography is no longer in the hands
of any one actor but is shaped in interaction with other actors (spectators, passers-by, riot police,
media representatives etc.) and their reactions to the protest. Therefore, in our perception,
political choreographies are collective phenomena where the choreographic ‘moves’ are
influenced by the context, the situation, and the environment. Political choreographies are
important in that they organize and drive forward political life and contribute significantly to the
generation, preservation, and change of constellations of political forces.
As pointed out already, in the political choreography of Occupy and other current political
mobilisations, ICTs and social media have played a focal role. As Parviainen (op.cit.) notes,
computers and the internet have facilitated new opportunities to influence body movements and
interaction. They have stretched and enlarged the physical (as well as temporal, which is
important for our argument) limits of political action, creating a range of opportunities to act and
play with changing space-time configurations. Because of this play possibility, vireal politics is
characteristically surprising, and often ‘messy’ (cf. Deuze 2012). Actors strive quite deliberately
at designing surprise moments, which is perhaps their most important political tactics. As one
occupier put it, writing in April 2012 (responding to media appraisals according to which the
moment of Occupy is fading): “Long left -- ‘dead’ by the mainstream media and political
institutions, we once again find ourselves in the luxury position of the underdog – capable once
more of harnessing the element of surprise to grab the system by its proverbial balls when it least
16
expects it; twisting, twirling and turning right where it hurts.” (Roos 2012) An Indian author and
activist Arundhati Roy (2011) makes a similar comment in relation to Occupy’s future prospects.
She notes: “I think the movement will, or at least should, become a protean movement of ideas,
as well as action, where the element of surprise remains with the protesters. We need to preserve
the element of an intellectual ambush and a physical manifestation that takes the government and
the police by surprise. It has to keep re-imagining itself, because holding territory may not be
something the movement will be allowed to do in a state as powerful and violent as the United
States.” (See also Moore 2011)
Jason Adams (2011) takes issue with Occupy’s spatial-temporal tactics in a thought-provoking
manner. What Adams finds interesting about Occupy is the way it has begun to complicate static
images of space, shifting to a more fluid, tactical approach, which is appropriate to the constantly
changing situations deployed from above but which also allows bringing forth new situations
from below. For example, when one occupation was evicted by police, others were erected
elsewhere. Or, if laws governing public parks were cited as excuse for demolishing the
occupation site, occupations simply moved to other premises like abandoned buildings and
foreclosed homes. Adams argues: “The tactical innovation the open timeframe enabled also
allowed the coordinates of each situation to be produced by the enactors themselves, on their
own, distinct terms. Thus, while the originally spatially-oriented events in lower Manhattan gave
birth to Occupy Wall Street, it was the temporal structure that enabled the emergence of Occupy
the Hood in Queens several weeks later. Had it simply been billed as a conventional one-day
protest confined to a single space, the few hundred who initially showed up in the streets near the
New York Stock Exchange would not have even registered in the media, let alone countless
people’s affective attachments, as is now the case.” (See also Pinto’s 2012 report on the
changing Occupy tactics)
Playing with temporal possibilities is not a new phenomenon, however. For example the
Situationists (mentioned above) maintained in the 1960s that what was most central to politics of
protest was not space but time, which is why they emphasized the importance of creating special
‘situations’ to interrupt everyday routines and rhythms and to turn things momentarily upside
down. According to Adams, also Occupy has endeavored to create ‘situations.’ For example,
when winter closed in the fall of 2011 and public space became difficult to hold, a more complex
focus emerged in e.g. organization of further strikes in cities and institutions, occupation of
buildings left vacant by bank foreclosures and capital flight, and move from permanent to flash
17
occupations. (In recent months and weeks Occupy has continued to innovate with new initiatives
and projects, such as ‘debt strike’ and ‘Foreclose the Banks’; see e.g. Pinto 2012) Adams points
to a paradox here: it is often the same means that have been introduced to manage and control
time in capitalist society more effectively that are later deployed subversively against their
original purpose, to question and challenge their consequences. ”While today’s accelerated
capitalism attempts to intensify accumulation through continuously revamped social
communication technologies, with each new innovation it also enable sits reversal by movements
like Occupy. This is why accelerated capitalism is faced with a “counter-temporality”, the
creation of, rather than response to, situations.”
Finally, it may be useful to illustrate differences between postmodern vireal politics and
traditional politics by drawing together some of their characteristics as discussed above. The
purpose is not to argue that all traditional politics employs these characteristics or that the listed
features are a full description of vireal politics. The list only offers attributes which appear
regularly but which are not conclusive.
Traditional
Vireal
- predictability
- routines, rituals
- representation, limited participation
- normalized citizenship, ritualized roles
- leadership, hierarchy, strategic action
- contingency, ‘flashes,’ situations
- performances, disruption
- ‘do-it-yourself,’ ’doing it together’
- self-defining, experimental citizenship
- no leaders or flash-leadership, horizontal
networks, tactical action
- patchwork-like vireal space, multiple
temporalities
- knowledge and affects intertwined
- messiness
- unified space and time
- knowledge, rationality
- clarity
5. Conclusion
In this article we have interpreted Occupy Wall Street as an example of current postmodern
performative mobilisations. As pointed out above, the rise Occupy in 2011 took most
commentators by surprise. Yet, its themes (like critique of neoliberalist politics) as well as action
repertoires (public performances, direct democracy, action on and through the net’s social
networking sites) have been on the agenda before. The roots of direct democracy reach back to
18
ancient Athens and critique of capitalism back to Marx. Both trajectories were, moreover,
extremely important for the 1960s radicalism, as well as for the post-sixties protest movements.
As to the importance of ICTs and social media for current social and political movements, it too
has been widely recognized for a few years now. So, we may ask, why did Occupy seem such an
unprecedented and fresh phenomenon?
On the basis of our discussion in this paper we can conclude that Occupy both was and was not a
surprising political turn. Let us explain this by making three points. First, remember that
postmodern thinking has for several decades critically deconstructed narratives of Enlightenment
and modern progress, while postmodern mobilisations have searched for new bases for political
involvement, like the motivation of individuals to affect the conditions of their lives. We also
need to take into account the contingent nature of politics in general, defined incisively by
Foucault as an interminable struggle between power and resistance. In this sense, Occupy can be
seen as a called-for strategic counter move to recent years’ neoliberalist hegemony and the 2008
financial crisis with its political repercussions, and its appearance need not be taken as a total
surprise.
Second, we should also take into account that mobilisations like Occupy are always perceivable,
even probable, as long as there are people in society who become reflexively aware of acute
social and political problems and start identifying themselves as a ‘demos’ capable of taking
political action to change society for the better (see Ranciere 2000). Single performative actions,
like occupations of public space, and the chains of events they initiate are, to be sure, surprising
political moments in so far as they manage to disrupt everyday routines and order, even if only
momentarily. On a longer haul, however, there is nothing strange about political performances as
such. They have a long history dating back to the Middle Ages carnivals through the early 20 th
century avant-gardist art and political movements to the highly performative protest movements
of recent years (such as the anti/alter-globalization movement).
Third, that which in Occupy is new and still evolving relates to its vireal way of being and
acting. Vireality expresses, as explained above, that people now combine inventively spatial and
temporal elements of action from the ‘real’ and the ‘virtual’ world at the same time. Politically
speaking, vireality enables action choreography and tactics which make movement politics
surprising and often eccentric. Here Occupy is an example of new, upcoming trend of political
culture the contours of which are just evolving.
19
In overall, we can think of the meaning of postmodern political mobilisations in the same way as
Monica Drexler (2007). Postmodern movements expose and question the limits of existing
political realities, imagining and suggesting alternatives to them. They mark the kind of political
action which performs political freedom instead of asking for it.
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