Where is the political? Insurgent mobilisations and the incipient “return of the political”

Abstract

There is an emerging intellectual body of thought on the dynamics of de-politicisation and the “disappearance of the political”. In the first part of the paper, I shall consider the process of post-politicisation. In a second part, I shall re-centre the political by drawing on the work of a range of political theorists and philosophers who have begun to question this post-politicising process. The theme of the final section will consider the contours of a reawakening of the democratic political understood as a political order contingently based on the axiomatic presumption of equality of each and every one in their capacity to act politically.

Keywords:

• post-politicisation
• political space
• democracy
• insurgent cities

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the referees for their constructive comments and to my students and colleagues who offered intellectual space and time. The usual disclaimers apply.

Funding

Research for this paper benefited from the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme; under REAS agreeement No 289374 – “ENTITLE”.