Dispossession describes the condition of those who have lost land,
citizenship, property, and a broader belonging to the world. This
thought-provoking book seeks to elaborate our understanding of
dispossession outside of the conventional logic of possession, a
hallmark of capitalism, liberalism, and humanism. Can dispossession
simultaneously characterize political responses and opposition to the
disenfranchisement associated with unjust dispossession of land,
economic and political power, and basic conditions for living?
In the context of neoliberal expropriation of labor and livelihood,
dispossession opens up a performative condition of being both affected
by injustice and prompted to act. From the uprisings in the Middle East
and North Africa to the anti-neoliberal gatherings at Puerta del Sol,
Syntagma and Zucchotti Park, an alternative political and affective
economy of bodies in public is being formed. Bodies on the street are
precarious - exposed to police force, they are also standing for, and
opposing, their dispossession. These bodies insist upon their collective
standing, organize themselves without and against hierarchy, and refuse
to become disposable: they demand regard. This book interrogates the
agonistic and open-ended corporeality and conviviality of the crowd as
it assembles in cities to protest political and economic dispossession
through a performative dispossession of the sovereign subject and its
propriety.
