Resistant legacies

Abstract

This paper addresses the dialectic between mega events (MEs) and the city, and especially the frictions generated by their encounter, which the current wave of protest and resistance to MEs provides with both a significant expression as well as a locus for conceptual and empirical exploration. First, I introduce the argument by looking at the spatiality of neoliberal capitalism through the abstract form of the urban it presupposes and the concrete affective, material and atmospheric assemblages through which it is actualized in the contemporary city – a process, I argue, which is always problematized by frictions, conflicts and contradictions. Second, I situate this discussion vis-à-vis what Jacob (2013) terms the eventification of urban space and particularly the peculiar contradiction it expresses: namely, that urban space increasingly becomes the locus of both the production and prevention of events – a contradiction whose effects can be most cogently observed in the current erosion of the right to protest in the contemporary city. Third, I introduce the ME as the site in which this dialectic and its contradictions are most forcefully expressed. MEs are the quintessential urban event, at the same time an intense generation of urban ‘effervescence’ (Durkheim, Emile. 2008. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Oxford University Press), and an apparatus aimed at channelling such effervescence into safe and capitalizable expressions. However, this process of ‘controlled decontrolling’ [Elias and Dunning. 1971. ‘Leisure in the Sparetime Spectrum’. In Sociology of Sport, edited by R. Albonic and K. Pfister-Binz. Birkhäuser] is always disjointed by the urban contingency in which it takes place, unintentionally producing frictions that are fraught with political potential. If the notion of legacy, as I suggest, is what cements the late interspersion between MEs and capitalist urbanization, then deconstructing legacy could provide a fresh perspective to explore the relation among MEs, urban space and resistance. Therefore, fourth, I introduce the concept of ‘resistant legacies’, whereby I propose to address conceptually and empirically the frictions produced by MEs and the impact and legacy they may leave on the social, affective and normative fabric of the city, by suggesting the current wave of ME protests as a promising site for this exploration. Finally, I conclude with some methodological suggestions for future research.

Keywords:

• mega event
• urban space
• protest
• abstraction
• legacy
• ethnography

Notes on contributor

Andrea Pavoni completed in 2013 his PhD at the University of Westminster, London, with a thesis titled Exceptional Tunings: Controlling Urban Events. He is about to begin a post-doc fellowship at DINÂMIA'CET – IUL, Centre for Socioeconomic and Territorial Studies, part of ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon. He holds a degree in media studies, and has studied surveillance, privacy and human rights at City University in London and as research consultant at the ICHRP in Geneva. Andrea is mostly interested in researching the way urban space is controlled, how order emerges, how disorder is kept at bay. His research draws from various areas such as critical geography, urban studies, legal theory, sociology and philosophy.

Notes

1. According to Lefebvre (1991), the capitalist production of abstract space occurs through a process of fragmentation, homogenization and hierarchization: spaces are separated (in functional terms) standardized and, finally, hierarchized, so as to make them exploitable. Tied to abstract space is the production of a ‘linear and quantified social rhythm’, as time ‘like space [ … ] divides itself onto lots and parcels’, thus becoming, again, exchangeable and exploitable (Lefebvre and Regulier, 1999, 74).

2. For an introduction to the process of territorialization–deterritorialization–reterritorialization, both understood as mechanism of oppression and creative praxis of resistance, see Deleuze and Guattari (1983).

3. For recent, interesting elaborations on Marx's notion of real abstraction see Toscano 2008; Cunningham 2008; McCormack 2012.

4. In Cunningham's words, its ‘real’ character means that an abstraction is to be understood as simultaneously the socio-spatial relations it presupposes and the concrete socio-spatial relations through which it is actualized: an abstraction ‘only attains ‘real existence’, and thus both specific and variable ‘form’ and ‘content’ … by virtue of the spatial production of its open and dispersed totality of specific material assemblages’ (2008, 458).

5. Paraphrasing from Brenner, the ME appears as a paradigmatic locus ‘in which the contradictory sociospatial relations of capitalism (commodification, capital circulation, capital accumulation, and associated forms of political regulation/contestation) are at once territorialized (embedded within concrete contexts and thus fragmented) and generalized (extended across place, territory, and scale and thus universalized)’ (2013, 95).

6. See for instance Bajc (2007).

7. On the more general shift in the target of EU social control policies, from the notion of ‘offence’ to that of ‘conflict’, see Tsoukala (2006). On the affective turn in security and the correlated surfacing of a ‘right to be free from fear’, see Hentschel (2010) and Ramsay (2010)

8. Douzinas (2014) proposes to redefine the right to protest and more generally the right to resistance as a right to the event.

9. If the countless explosions of protests worldwide would not be enough in supporting this argument, popular culture would suffice: take Time's decision to give its 2011 ‘person of the year’ award to the ‘Protester’.

10. Here I am paraphrasing from Cunningham (2005, 22), who contends that ‘the practical productive possibilities of the metropolitan system of connectivity are not exhausted, in advance, by their abstract structuring by the conditions of capital accumulation’.

11. I am referring to, and perverting, Chappellet's definition: ‘the legacy of a mega sporting event is all that remains and may be considered as consequences of the event in its environment’ (2012, 77).

12. Burbank et al. (2000, 39) define in this way, respectively, what characterizes ‘antigrowth movement’ and ‘piecemeal resistance’.

13. Boycoff and Fussey (2014) and Boyle and Haggerty (2009) differently point to the ‘invisible’ dimension of legacy I am interested in unpacking, although they only focus on ‘negative’ legacies such as over-securitization and the erosion of civil rights.

14. Among such ‘planners' Miraftab includes protesters as well as ‘community activists, mothers, professional planners, school teachers, city councilors, the unemployed, retired residents, etc.’ (2009)

15. Here the activist is referring to the title of the Milan ’15 Expo: feeding the planet, energy for life (my translation).

16. In a similar vein McGillivray observes that the digital acceleration provided by new media ‘shifts the power of scale, demonstrating the active mobilization of citizens’ (2014, 108).

17. Here Boycoff is quoting respectively David Eby, the Executive Director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, Cecily Nicholson, coordinator of the Downtown Eastside Women's centre, and Dave Diewert, from Streams of Justice.