Politics and the city: Protest, memory, and contested space in Bangkok

Abstract

The past years have seen a significant shift in the configuration of political space in Thailand, metaphorically and literally. The rudimentary but progressive development of politics along programmatic and ideological fault lines between political and social groups has led to bitter contestations both within the political structure as well as in physical space. This chapter aims to draw a dialectic connection between the two, structure and space, based on an analysis of the site of the most recent political protests, Ratchaprasong intersection in the modern city center of Bangkok. The chapter is thoroughly embedded in the spatial turn and makes use of theories of space and place to shed light on the broader significance of this specific urban center. Historically, urban protests took place in the old part of Bangkok along Ratchadamnoen Avenue, a street that increasingly resembles an outdoor museum. The recent wave of demonstrations at Ratchaprasong intersection between shopping malls, offices, shrines, a palace, and an elite university signifies a change not only of place but of the quality of political discourse. Protests in the old city came to acquire a merely performative quality on a stage set by the state that starkly contrasts with the new and lived site that is Ratchaprasong intersection. It will be shown that, even in times of cyberspace, political conflict needs physical space, yet not any kind of space but one that gives meaning to a specific kind of conflict.