Dépossession

Dialogue between Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou: the debate revolves around those who have lost their country, their nationality, their property, all those who have been expropriated from their belonging to the world. What does this precariousness, this fundamental loss, mean in a capitalist society dominated by the logic of possession? Can this awareness of expropriation lead to a new form of resistance, a political response to those who have been stripped of their rights, their property, in a word, the basic conditions of life itself?

The revolutionary uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, like the demonstrations in Puerta del Sol, Syntagma Square and Zucotti Park, are establishing a new political and emotional economy of the body in public space. The street is the place par excellence of the expropriated – of those who defy the police and spontaneously come together in collectives to raise their voices, to be seen and heard. The book offers an introduction to the complexity of new forms of disenfranchisement, dispossession and political contestation. A reflection on the power of the perfomative and the loss of power of the classical sovereign and moral subject.