Prefiguration and the post-representational politics of anti-deportation activism

Abstract

This article addresses a familiar dilemma in discussions of experimental forms of political practice in the context of state racism. On one hand, the predominant modes of engaging with state power through strategically representing claims to state actors often re-affirm the categories of state domination, mimic the hierarchies that radical actors intend to overcome, and tend to become invested in a reformism that limits the horizon of change. On the other, prefigurative politics seeks to craft resistance practices that instantiate desired future relations in ways that can seem hopeless against the institutional power of the state and the investments in racial dominance that underpins its actions, with the danger of producing an unstrategic and naïve inversion of the state logics that activists want to oppose. Drawing on interviews and participation with grassroots anti-deportation activist groups, this article argues that a third concept, that of post-representational politics, is a necessary tool for recognising and engaging with experimental forms of political practice that oppose state racism. It argues that both the practice and the notion of post-representational politics sensitise us to important aspects of radical political praxis in ways that enable responses to critics of prefigurative politics without ever-expanding the boundaries of that concept.