Monstrous Events: Aesthetic Dimensions of Collective Protest
The project examines art, literature and film dealing with collective protests in 2011 and after. It will explore how aesthetic presentations advance our understanding of collective political action in ways that other modes of knowledge such as sociology, history and journalism are unable to do. Three interrelated research questions stand at the center:
(1) How do aesthetic accounts of collective protests articulate and present ideas and experiences of emancipation, solidarity and temporality?
(2) What do such aesthetically rendered experiences tell us about political action and democratic participation?
(3) How do we explain that aesthetics can convey knowledge of collective protest, political action and democratic participation that evades the epistemological categories of historiography, social science and journalism?
The material is a selection of literary and artistic works that present or perform the Tahrir revolution in Cairo 2011, the People’s Assemblies in Athens 2011, and the Maidan Revolt in Kiev 2013–2014. The project focuses on the dialogical and multivocal modes of experience at the heart collective protest, and examines whether aesthetic works owns similar dialogical qualities. Distinguishing between epistemologies of Representation and Participation, the project explores whether aesthetics can capture experiences of emancipation, solidarity and time that correspond to collective paticipation and democratic agency. Can art help us understand democracy?
Final report
Stefan Jonsson
P17-0532:1 Monstrous Events: Aesthetic Dimensions of Collective Protest
Final report to Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, 27 January, 2023
The purpose of the project and its development
The project’s purpose has been to interpret aesthetic works as expressions of collective democratic protests. The project has examined a large body of aesthetic works from 2011-2014, all of them produced in the context of revolutionary uprisings after the world economic crisis of 2007–2008. Analyzing material related mainly to three events – the 25 January Revolution in Egypt 2011, the Ukrainian Revolution 2013-14, and the anti-austerity uprisings in Greece 2011 – the project has analyzed how such aesthetic works articulate the emancipation, solidarity, and temporality of protest actions and insurgent events. A more specific purpose of the project has been to show that aesthetic works, in their presentation of protest events, encapsulate knowledge of democracy and society that is inaccessible to other modes of knowledge such as sociology, political science, history and journalism. An overall purpose has therefore been to establish aesthetic imagination and performativity as fundamental to democracy – and aesthetic interpretation as crucial to the understanding of democratic practices.
The project’s purpose and objectives, as well as its theoretical and methodological frames have been unchanged, but crucial expansions nuances have been added and modifications made. This is due to the organic evolution to be expected in intellectual processes. For example, additional theoretical perspectives and concepts have been introduced, and more adequate method approaches have been developed in the course of specific interpretations. New material has also been added, much because of collective protest movements that have emerged after the application, such as the Gilets jaunes movement in France, the student protests in Hongkong, the 2020 Black Lives Matter-protests, and the 2022 democratic protests in Iran.
Execution of the project
Major factors have affected the project’s execution. The illness and death of a close family member in 2019 prohibited me from doing planned research visits to Kiev, Cairo and Athens that year. Next, the Covid-19 pandemic inhibited such trips also in 2020. A highly rewarding research visit to Athens was made in late 2018. A field trip to Kyiv was instead undertaken in 2021, and one to Athens in early 2022. Circumstances did not allow travel to Cairo, as originally planned.
Despite these disruptions, sufficient research materials have been collected and background interviews made according to plan, but, as said, not in situ in the case of Cairo. More than expected the project has had to rely on virtual meetings and correspondence with colleagues and informants, especially from Egypt. These circumstances have not affected the analysis and conclusions as much as they have affected the selection of examples and objects of analysis. However, the project is a single-scholar undertaking, with assistance for linguistic expertise and contextual orientation from colleagues and research assistants on empirical cases, and it therefore has allowed for flexibility and adjustments of its workplan.
Discussion of the three most important results of the project
The project set out to investigate three interrelated research questions, and each has led to important results, as described below.
(1) How were ideas and experiences of Emancipation, Solidarity and Temporality articulated in aesthetic accounts of collective protests in 2011 and after?
On this question the project has been able to draw interesting conclusions. While articulations of ideas and experiences of emancipation, solidarity and temporality in the 2011-collective protests have come in many different forms and shapes, a few dominant forms or genres have been identified: the documentary assemblage, the verbatim performance, witness accounts, encyclopedias and archives of revolution, collective film and poster production, most of which are characterized by collective or anonymous authorship, spontaneous production, a rhetoric of emotional intensity, an attitude of existential tenacity, de-individualization, intensive embodiment, and epiphanies of freedom. Interestingly, the project has been able to trace how much of this aesthetic production relied on digital platforms, which allows for rapid compilation and re-composition of images, narratives, reports, and other documentary material.
(2) What do such aesthetically rendered experiences tell us about political action and democratic participation? In the abovementioned characteristics of the art of protest the project has detected ideas of emancipation, solidarity and temporality which are particular to moments of political emergence. This is a highly important result or conclusion. The analyses have been able to substantiate and develop the idea of political emergence as a distinct moment of societal transformation that is crucial for our understanding of democracy: before people and groups are recognized as political agents, they appear as embodied subjects who assert their presence in the public realm through various kinds of aesthetic expressions.
(3) How do we explain that literary and aesthetic works can convey knowledge of collective protest, political emergence and democratic participation that evades the epistemological categories of historiography, social science and journalism? Precisely because emergent political agents and movements first assert their presence, motivations and demands in aesthetic registers, their historical importance and political nature can be identified and judged above all by aesthetic interpretation. To theorize this aspect, the project has developed a concept of aesthetic knowledge and also a method of analysis that avoids transforming emergent political agents and movements into representations of already existing political ideas, values, and parties, and instead is able to assess their transformative potential. Notions and phenomena that are central to the project – witnessing, participation, phenomenological experience, embodiment, visualization, and narrativization – have contributed to a non-representational understanding of political agency and action.
In thus establishing aesthetic knowledge as central to the understanding of insurgent disruptions and interruptions of political order, the project has opened a path to a better conceptualization of some of the allegedly most enigmatic phenomena in the historical process: popular revolt and revolution. It has also led to a better understanding of political agency as such. In turn, these results demonstrate that protest, uprisings, and revolts are intimately linked to the idea of democracy. Through these results, the project contributes to history, sociology, political science, political philosophy, journalism, and public understanding more generally.
New research questions generated by the project
Three lines of research have been opened by the project. To explain how, let us note that the project has been carried out in a contemporary context marked by (1) the resurgence of rightwing, populist, and fascist movements, (2) migrant movements, and (3) the ongoing establishment of digital infrastructures, leading to increasing mediation of cultural expressions through digital platforms. The project’s conceptualization of aesthetic knowledge of political emergence is pertinent to the understanding of each of these three areas. The project therefore has opened a path to pioneering analysis of rightwing populist cultural expressions; a separate project has been established for this purpose. It has also opened a path for pioneering analysis of what is termed “migratory aesthetics”, which I have developed explorative essays. Finally, the project has opened up perspectives for the study of the digital governance of human collectives and democratic participation, and here, too, a new project has been established, together with visual artist Anna Ådahl, adopting methods of artistic research.
Research dissemination and collaboration
Research undertaken in the project has been disseminated in four forms. First, a substantial number of academic articles have been published (see below). These articles form the basis of a forthcoming monograph.
Second, the project has met considerable interest both nationally and internationally. There has been no need to seek acceptance at conference sessions, because the project leader has often been invited to present it, especially before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, for instance, at Copenhagen U (2019), Yale U (2018), U of Manchester (2019), Columbia U (2019), M.S. Merian – R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies, New Delhi (2018) the Graduate Institute, Geneva, (2019), Luleå Art Biennial (2021), Nordisk kulturfond (2019) The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, and Uppsala U (2019), Humboldt Universität (2022), Universität Bamberg, Siegen (2021), as well as a Nobel Symposium in Stockholm 2022. Two talks at the Maidan Museum in Kyiv, in summer and fall 2021, deserve special mention.
Third, the project leader has been co-editor with a colleague in political aesthetics at Copenhagen University of a special issue of K&K – Kultur & Klasse, Nordic Journal for research in the humanities, on the topic of the aesthetics of democratic revolt.
Fourth, the project leader has been invited to deliver public talks on the topic of the project. There has also been collaboration with cultural institutions, such as art centers, theaters, and organizations of adult learning, too many to mention.
The project leader acknowledges the invaluable help and consultancy of the following: Galyna Kutsovska, Sahar Buran, Artemis Potamianou, Marina Fokidis, d Ihor Phosyvailo. He also acknowledges his gratitude to Riksbankens Jubileumsfond for generous support.
P17-0532:1 Monstrous Events: Aesthetic Dimensions of Collective Protest
Final report to Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, 27 January, 2023
The purpose of the project and its development
The project’s purpose has been to interpret aesthetic works as expressions of collective democratic protests. The project has examined a large body of aesthetic works from 2011-2014, all of them produced in the context of revolutionary uprisings after the world economic crisis of 2007–2008. Analyzing material related mainly to three events – the 25 January Revolution in Egypt 2011, the Ukrainian Revolution 2013-14, and the anti-austerity uprisings in Greece 2011 – the project has analyzed how such aesthetic works articulate the emancipation, solidarity, and temporality of protest actions and insurgent events. A more specific purpose of the project has been to show that aesthetic works, in their presentation of protest events, encapsulate knowledge of democracy and society that is inaccessible to other modes of knowledge such as sociology, political science, history and journalism. An overall purpose has therefore been to establish aesthetic imagination and performativity as fundamental to democracy – and aesthetic interpretation as crucial to the understanding of democratic practices.
The project’s purpose and objectives, as well as its theoretical and methodological frames have been unchanged, but crucial expansions nuances have been added and modifications made. This is due to the organic evolution to be expected in intellectual processes. For example, additional theoretical perspectives and concepts have been introduced, and more adequate method approaches have been developed in the course of specific interpretations. New material has also been added, much because of collective protest movements that have emerged after the application, such as the Gilets jaunes movement in France, the student protests in Hongkong, the 2020 Black Lives Matter-protests, and the 2022 democratic protests in Iran.
Execution of the project
Major factors have affected the project’s execution. The illness and death of a close family member in 2019 prohibited me from doing planned research visits to Kiev, Cairo and Athens that year. Next, the Covid-19 pandemic inhibited such trips also in 2020. A highly rewarding research visit to Athens was made in late 2018. A field trip to Kyiv was instead undertaken in 2021, and one to Athens in early 2022. Circumstances did not allow travel to Cairo, as originally planned.
Despite these disruptions, sufficient research materials have been collected and background interviews made according to plan, but, as said, not in situ in the case of Cairo. More than expected the project has had to rely on virtual meetings and correspondence with colleagues and informants, especially from Egypt. These circumstances have not affected the analysis and conclusions as much as they have affected the selection of examples and objects of analysis. However, the project is a single-scholar undertaking, with assistance for linguistic expertise and contextual orientation from colleagues and research assistants on empirical cases, and it therefore has allowed for flexibility and adjustments of its workplan.
Discussion of the three most important results of the project
The project set out to investigate three interrelated research questions, and each has led to important results, as described below.
(1) How were ideas and experiences of Emancipation, Solidarity and Temporality articulated in aesthetic accounts of collective protests in 2011 and after?
On this question the project has been able to draw interesting conclusions. While articulations of ideas and experiences of emancipation, solidarity and temporality in the 2011-collective protests have come in many different forms and shapes, a few dominant forms or genres have been identified: the documentary assemblage, the verbatim performance, witness accounts, encyclopedias and archives of revolution, collective film and poster production, most of which are characterized by collective or anonymous authorship, spontaneous production, a rhetoric of emotional intensity, an attitude of existential tenacity, de-individualization, intensive embodiment, and epiphanies of freedom. Interestingly, the project has been able to trace how much of this aesthetic production relied on digital platforms, which allows for rapid compilation and re-composition of images, narratives, reports, and other documentary material.
(2) What do such aesthetically rendered experiences tell us about political action and democratic participation? In the abovementioned characteristics of the art of protest the project has detected ideas of emancipation, solidarity and temporality which are particular to moments of political emergence. This is a highly important result or conclusion. The analyses have been able to substantiate and develop the idea of political emergence as a distinct moment of societal transformation that is crucial for our understanding of democracy: before people and groups are recognized as political agents, they appear as embodied subjects who assert their presence in the public realm through various kinds of aesthetic expressions.
(3) How do we explain that literary and aesthetic works can convey knowledge of collective protest, political emergence and democratic participation that evades the epistemological categories of historiography, social science and journalism? Precisely because emergent political agents and movements first assert their presence, motivations and demands in aesthetic registers, their historical importance and political nature can be identified and judged above all by aesthetic interpretation. To theorize this aspect, the project has developed a concept of aesthetic knowledge and also a method of analysis that avoids transforming emergent political agents and movements into representations of already existing political ideas, values, and parties, and instead is able to assess their transformative potential. Notions and phenomena that are central to the project – witnessing, participation, phenomenological experience, embodiment, visualization, and narrativization – have contributed to a non-representational understanding of political agency and action.
In thus establishing aesthetic knowledge as central to the understanding of insurgent disruptions and interruptions of political order, the project has opened a path to a better conceptualization of some of the allegedly most enigmatic phenomena in the historical process: popular revolt and revolution. It has also led to a better understanding of political agency as such. In turn, these results demonstrate that protest, uprisings, and revolts are intimately linked to the idea of democracy. Through these results, the project contributes to history, sociology, political science, political philosophy, journalism, and public understanding more generally.
New research questions generated by the project
Three lines of research have been opened by the project. To explain how, let us note that the project has been carried out in a contemporary context marked by (1) the resurgence of rightwing, populist, and fascist movements, (2) migrant movements, and (3) the ongoing establishment of digital infrastructures, leading to increasing mediation of cultural expressions through digital platforms. The project’s conceptualization of aesthetic knowledge of political emergence is pertinent to the understanding of each of these three areas. The project therefore has opened a path to pioneering analysis of rightwing populist cultural expressions; a separate project has been established for this purpose. It has also opened a path for pioneering analysis of what is termed “migratory aesthetics”, which I have developed explorative essays. Finally, the project has opened up perspectives for the study of the digital governance of human collectives and democratic participation, and here, too, a new project has been established, together with visual artist Anna Ådahl, adopting methods of artistic research.
Research dissemination and collaboration
Research undertaken in the project has been disseminated in four forms. First, a substantial number of academic articles have been published (see below). These articles form the basis of a forthcoming monograph.
Second, the project has met considerable interest both nationally and internationally. There has been no need to seek acceptance at conference sessions, because the project leader has often been invited to present it, especially before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, for instance, at Copenhagen U (2019), Yale U (2018), U of Manchester (2019), Columbia U (2019), M.S. Merian – R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies, New Delhi (2018) the Graduate Institute, Geneva, (2019), Luleå Art Biennial (2021), Nordisk kulturfond (2019) The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, and Uppsala U (2019), Humboldt Universität (2022), Universität Bamberg, Siegen (2021), as well as a Nobel Symposium in Stockholm 2022. Two talks at the Maidan Museum in Kyiv, in summer and fall 2021, deserve special mention.
Third, the project leader has been co-editor with a colleague in political aesthetics at Copenhagen University of a special issue of K&K – Kultur & Klasse, Nordic Journal for research in the humanities, on the topic of the aesthetics of democratic revolt.
Fourth, the project leader has been invited to deliver public talks on the topic of the project. There has also been collaboration with cultural institutions, such as art centers, theaters, and organizations of adult learning, too many to mention.
The project leader acknowledges the invaluable help and consultancy of the following: Galyna Kutsovska, Sahar Buran, Artemis Potamianou, Marina Fokidis, d Ihor Phosyvailo. He also acknowledges his gratitude to Riksbankens Jubileumsfond for generous support.