Judith Butler interviewed on “Acting in Concert”

On the conditions and purposes of political action:  “For me, the crowds that matter are those that seek to assert the accountability of the state to the people it claims to represent, and to activate that popular dimension of democratic politics that has the power to legitimate or delegitimate a regime that seeks to lay…

Jonas Staal: “Assemblism”

The power of artists in assemblism:  “As artists, we are not in power, but through morphology we give power: we give form to power. The practice of assemblism that we can derive from [Judith Butler’s Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly] opens up the possibility of a new collectivity arising from the precariat—a new…

Judith Butler on the extraparliamentary power of assemblies

“Reflections on Trump“:  “So many of the public demonstrations against austerity and precarity present bodies in the street and within public view who are themselves suffering from displacement and disenfranchisement. They also assert political agency in common by gathering as they do. … Although demonstrations and assemblies are often not enough to produce radical change,…