Kirjahaku

In Paradoxes of Emancipation, Dimitris Soudias traces the formation of political subjectivity in times of crisis, by attending to the 2011 occupation of Syntagma Square in Athens: the heart of the Greek anti-austerity movement. Soudias conceives of the Syntagma Square occupation as a lens through which we can critically engage with broader theoretical and political issues about the crumbling promises of the capitalist imaginary, the epistemic "spirit" of neoliberal rationalities, the spatialized practices of navigating precarity and uncertainty, and the prospects for a radically better tomorrow.By challenging both the romanticization of anti-austerity activism and the reduction of neoliberalism to mere free market thinking, Soudias reveals that the relationship between political subject formation and emancipation in neoliberalism is utterly paradoxical: in their effort to overcome neoliberal rationalities, individuals also partly stabilize them. Interweaving the stories and insights of activists with light-touch sociology, geography, and political theory, this book makes bold claims about the future of emancipation by envisioning an "alter-neoliberal critique." In so doing, Paradoxes of Emancipation presents an illuminating inquiry into how our experiences with capitalist crises lead to profound reevaluations of ourselves in ways that challenge our expectations of the future.

In Paradoxes of Emancipation, Dimitris Soudias traces the formation of political subjectivity in times of crisis, by attending to the 2011 occupation of Syntagma Square in Athens: the heart of the Greek anti-austerity movement. Soudias conceives of the Syntagma Square occupation as a lens through which we can critically engage with broader theoretical and political issues about the crumbling promises of the capitalist imaginary, the epistemic "spirit" of neoliberal rationalities, the spatialized practices of navigating precarity and uncertainty, and the prospects for a radically better tomorrow.By challenging both the romanticization of anti-austerity activism and the reduction of neoliberalism to mere free market thinking, Soudias reveals that the relationship between political subject formation and emancipation in neoliberalism is utterly paradoxical: in their effort to overcome neoliberal rationalities, individuals also partly stabilize them. Interweaving the stories and insights of activists with light-touch sociology, geography, and political theory, this book makes bold claims about the future of emancipation by envisioning an "alter-neoliberal critique." In so doing, Paradoxes of Emancipation presents an illuminating inquiry into how our experiences with capitalist crises lead to profound reevaluations of ourselves in ways that challenge our expectations of the future.

This monograph offers a diachronic analysis of the development of street protests in Egypt that led to the downfall of Mubarak in 2011. It shows how the January 25 uprising was the culminating episode of negotiating power relations in a series of five consecutive contentious cycles since 2000. Based on a conceptual framework combining premises of social movement theory, power and knowledge, and sociology of space, it argues that the negotiation of power relations in Egypt has been expressed through the ‘battle’ over socially produced protest spaces.