Cities Reading Group Judith Butler: Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street

Continuing our dialogue on urban space, the December reading group focuses on a seminal text by philosopher and theorist Judith Butler, written at the beginning of the Occupy movement and during the Egyptian revolution of 2011, also appearing in her 2015 book, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. The text explores what it means to gather in space, how we construct ideas of place and understand the material and bodily nature of protest. Its the first text in our reading series so far that addresses the implications of 'the body' in political space, discussing how space and location are created through plural action. The text begins:

In the last months there have been, time and again, mass demonstrations on the street, in the square, and though these are very often motivated by different political purposes, something similar happens: bodies congregate, they move and speak together, and they lay claim to a certain space as public space. Now, it would be easier to say that these demonstrations or, indeed, these movements, are characterized by bodies that come together to make a claim in public space, but that formulation presumes that public space is given, that it is already public, and recognized as such. We miss something of the point of public demonstrations, if we fail to see that the very public character of the space is being disputed and even fought over when these crowds gather. So though these movements have depended on the prior existence of pavement, street, and square, and have often enough gathered in squares, like Tahrir, whose political history is potent, it is equally true that the collective actions collect the space itself, gather the pavement, and animate and organize the architecture. As much as we must insist on there being material conditions for public assembly and public speech, we have also to ask how it is that assembly and speech reconfigure the materiality of public space, and produce, or reproduce, the public character of that material environment. And when crowds move outside the square, to the side street or the back alley, to the neighborhoods where streets are not yet paved, then something more happens.

Participants should read the text before coming along, it can be found here

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