The Prefigurative Politics of Volunteer Subtitling in the Egyptian Revolution

Professor Martha Cheung Memorial Lecture, May 2014, Hong Kong Baptist University Mona Baker, Centre for Translation & Intercultural Studies, University of Manchester The idea of prefiguration originally derived from anarchist discourse; it involves experimenting with currently available means in such a way that they come to mirror or actualize the political ideals that inform a movement, thus collapsing the traditional distinction

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Can Prefigurative Politics Replace Political Strategy?

Jonathan M. Smucker October 7, 2014,  Berkeley Journal of Sociology Occupy Wall Street participant Jonathan Smucker takes a critical look at the movement’s “prefigurative politics” through the theoretical lenses of Gramsci and Habermas. What is politics? In this essay, I examine so-called “prefigurative politics” as it played out in Occupy Wall Street (OWS)—through Gramscian and Habermasian theoretical lenses. My analysis

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Reinventing democracy

Marianne Maeckelbergh argues that one of the global justice movement’s key innovations has been its approach to democratic decision-making December 2009, in Red Pepper It was getting late on day two of seemingly hopeless meetings. The assembly hall was full, but the energy with which the discussion began was waning fast. People had travelled to Paris from across Europe for this European

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Prefiguration in Contemporary Activism

A CTIS/CIDRAL Workshop: 4 December 2014  Keynote Speaker: Marianne Maeckelbergh (Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University, Netherlands; Co-founder of Global Uprisings) Click here for programme and abstracts Prefiguration, or ‘prefigurative politics’, involves experimenting with ways of enacting the principles being advocated by an activist group in the here and now, rather than at some future point when the conditions for

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Networks, insurgencies, and prefigurative politics: A cycle of global indignation

by Guiomar Rovira Sancho, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico Guiomar Rovira Sancho, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Carlos Lazo 218, int 2, Col. M.Hidalgo, cp. 14250, Mexico City, Mexico. Email: ondina_peraire@yahoo.com Published online before print July 15, 2014, doi: 10.1177/1354856514541743 Convergence July 15, 20141354856514541743 Abstract E-mail and Web pages made it possible to generate a space for global mobilization against the repression of the Zapatista indigenous rebels

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