Here and Elsewhere: Phenomenological Reflections on the Time and Space of Mass Street Protests

Abstract

This paper pursues a phenomenological clarification of the spatial and temporal constitution of the mass protest experience. I argue that important features of its unique structure can guide an exploration of its significance and potential. I begin by bringing some of these into relief by considering how a mass street protest is unlike other forms of resistant collective action that take place in public spaces: in particular, scenes of violent revolt (I draw on Sartre’s analysis of the storming of the Bastille in The Critique of Dialectical Reason) and Arendtian “spaces of appearance” that emerge in the context of revolutionary activity. I then argue that a crucial feature of the mass protest is that it always also takes place elsewhere. This can be understood both spatially (it happens in other neighborhoods, in other cities, perhaps in other countries; it may be broadcasted to spectators all over) and temporally (mass protests inevitably recall and seem to participate in past protests and portend future ones). This is not simply a matter of resemblance, but part of their internal sense. They should therefore not be understood as beginnings but as experiences of what I call “the middle.” One is always in the middle of a crowd and in the middle of an arc of political time. I conclude with reflections on what it might mean for a democratic politics to speak to and out of this feature of the mass protest experience. Drawing on Arendt, I propose an art of storytelling and historical comprehension. What requires illumination and expression, I contend, are modes of co-belonging and solidarity with distant others, in time and space, and the massiveness of the problems that define our contemporary situation.