Prefigurative Politics and Social Movement Strategy: The Roles of Prefiguration in the Reproduction, Mobilisation and Coordination of Movements

Abstract

Recent work historicises and theoretically refines the concept of prefigurative politics. Yet disagreements over the question of whether or how it is politically effective remain. What roles does prefiguration play in strategies of transformation, and what implications does it have for understandings of strategy? The article begins to answer this question by tracking the concept’s use, from discussions of left strategy in the 1960s, a qualifier of new social movements in the 1980s–1990s, its application to protest events in the 2000s, to its contemporary proliferation of meanings. This contextualises reflections on the changing arguments about the roles of prefiguration in social movement strategy. Based on literature about strategy, three essential categories of applied movement strategy are identified: reproduction, mobilisation and coordination. Prefigurative dynamics are part of all three, showing that the reproduction of movements is strategically significant, while the coordination of movements can take various ‘prefigurative’ forms.