Weak Resistance in Semi-Peripheries: The Emergence of Non-Heroic Counterpublics

Abstract

This chapter argues that the recent protests constitute “non-heroic counterpublics,” in which the heroic European masculine self is dismantled and replaced by an everyday resistance of the weak. It explores the implications of these changes for the concept of counterpublics, developed in Western Europe to depict oppositional politics in late capitalist societies dominated by the bourgeoisie and organized as parliamentary democracies. Beginning with the “white town”—the small, tents-based site constructed by striking nurses in front of the government’s headquarters in Warsaw, Poland in 2007, via the Occupy movements, the Arab Revolutions, and the Majdan Square gatherings in Kiev, Ukraine, up to the women’s protests of 2016 across the world, we have witnessed the emergence of new politics of resistance.