The event and politics: a cartography of the Brazilian mass protests

ABSTRACT

It is common to understand mass demonstrations, like those belonging to the new cycle of contentious politics, as disruptive political events. However, there is no consensus on how to define what political events are, let alone how to investigate them. Most frequently, events are romanticized and understood as great ruptures, which makes the concept problematic as a means to investigate these new political phenomena. In this article, through the systematisation of Deleuze's philosophy of the event, I advance a theoretical approach that enables us to analyse and map the complexity of political events like mass protests. To demonstrate the potential of this approach, I elaborate a cartography of the Brazilian protests in 2013.

KEYWORDS:

• Event
• Gilles Deleuze
• political theory
• contentious politics
• Brazilian protests

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Lasse Thomassen, Kimberly Hutchings, Diego Lock Farina, Antonio Barros, and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback on earlier versions of the argument presented here.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Discussing in full Badiou’s complex theory of events and its critics is not the focus here and would indeed require another paper. For a detailed account on Badiou’s thinking see Barker (2002), Bosteels (2013) and Hallward (Hallward 2003). For some sharp critiques, see Roffe (2012), Crockett (2013), Nirenberg and Nirenberg (2011), Williams (2012) and Rancière (2016).

2 In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze develops a philosophy of time where each time, past, present and future, are independent dimensions founded in a specific synthesis but that can only be complete in a necessary relation to the other times. For instance, the living present of bodies and things is founded on a synthesis of contraction (things and individuals prehend other things) that also grounds habit, and it makes both past and present its dimensions. Yet, paradoxically, the living present cannot past into the past while building such a dimension for itself. Thus, it needs another synthesis to build the past, and this is a synthesis of a general or pure past (virtual past) that never existed as a present. This virtual past subsists in the present and makes it past and forces the future to arrive. The future, as a separate dimension and synthesis, is that which brings the free flow of differences in the Nietzschean eternal return. For the unfamiliar reader, Deleuze’s philosophy of time in Difference and Repetition may seem at odds with the time of Chronos and Aion, but scholars like Williams (2011b) and Widder (2008) have already shown the compatibility and complementarity of these two readings of time.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel - Brazil (CAPES).

Notes on contributors

Matheus Lock

Matheus Lock is a PhD in political science whose work focuses on the intersection between the philosophy of the event, social movements, technopolitics and populism. He is the author of Comunicações transversais: o preconceito digital e os efeitos na opinião pública (Cross-cutting communications: digital prejudice and the effects on public opinion).