Resistance in Public Spaces: Questions of Distinction,Duration,and Expansion

Introduction

In many places in the world, in times of crisis, both in the past and at present, both the media and, to a lesser degree, academia focus on practices of resistance in public space. Examples are political demonstrations against austerity politics and its consequences on the streets and plazas of Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Italy. There are also the Arab Spring protests, the Umbrella movement in Hong Kong, or the protest on the opening day of the European Central bank in Frankfurt. More regular annual demonstrations include the classic Western examples of Christopher Street Day or trade unions protests on May Day. Those protests often take place in central parks or squares like Taksim Square and Gezi Park in Istanbul and Tahrir square in Cairo. They can also occur in smaller places like Zuccotti Park in New York City, or at common symbolic sites of power such as in front of government buildings or at the gates of corporate headquarters. Resistance against a dominant order can also be seen in micro-political practices like graffiti, jaywalking, and using public spaces in unsanctioned ways, such as guerilla gardening. Such practices of resistance employ diverse aesthetics and follow different modes of operation, but they can all change the symbolic meaning of a place. These redefined places can then become incorporated into the protester’s message (Routledge, 1997).

Yet the limits of resistance are often overlooked, especially in the current rapid research and publication cycles of academia. This introductory article discusses these limits in two stages. First, we provide a brief overview of the existing research on the impact of protests, responses, and the results of recent changes in the way public space is ordered and regulated against the backdrop of wider sociopolitical and economic transformations. We then focus on the three aspects that we consider central to the analysis of specific acts of resistance and their consequences: their political aesthetics and the way they link into practices of distinction, their temporal duration, and their spatial extension. We change terminology frequently during this discussion because we think it is necessary to address two different theoretical perspectives on the role of resistance, one with a focus on actual practices and their effects in space and the other with a focus on (political) subjectivities. In the final section, we briefly discuss the role of Rancière and his concept of aesthetics as a possible link between these perspectives.

Limits and Potentials of Resistance

The limits of resistance can be seen in studies comparing the demands or expectations of protesters to the outcomes of their protests. Existing research has shown this in particular concerning issues of control over space. Protest might lead to transformations that are not intended by the protest or that are even contradictory to the protest’s aims. We can see this when more restrictions and control are established through new surveillance systems, increased police or military presence, more effective means of crowd control and domination or more effective weapons. In these cases, public space, that is, the “location where the social interactions and political activities of all members of ‘the public’ occur” (Mitchell, 1995, p. 116), is controlled. Protests might be restricted or forbidden at some places, as when officials refuse to grant a permit for protests (Mitchell & Staeheli, 2005), through the activity of public police forces or private security companies (Paasche, Yarwood, & Sidaway, 2014) or through controlling geography (Mitchell, 2003). This control of public space can occur through establishing surveillance and social control, privatizing space that was previously public (Kohn, 2004; Low & Smith, 2006; Miller, 2007) as in gated communities (Bartu Candan & Kolluoğlu, 2008; Low, 2001), or altering the specific design of places to create wide and accessible streets or squares that allow heavily-armed police or military forces to take control—as planned by Haussmann in Paris or as can be seen in the recently transformed West-Amman (Schwedler, 2012). This regulation fulfils the demands of a deregulated economy and reflects the interests of a hierarchized power system that focuses on security and controlling disturbances caused by supposedly dangerous minorities or terrorists. Together with what is characterized as a neoliberal transformation of cities, the loss of public space as such is widely denounced as a result of transformed political, economic, and cultural rules (Davis, 1990). Its effects are denounced as domesticating (Koch & Latham, 2013) and privatizing public spaces (Allen, 2006) in “revanchist” cities (Atkinson, 2003; Mitchell, 1995; Schinkel & van den Berg, 2011).

Yet these power structures and discourses, or sociomaterial dispositifs (Foucault, 1980), also have their limits. They still leave at least some room for contestations, acts of resistance, and transformations, even if only on a smaller scale. There is a wide array of existing research on practices of resistance in the public space, mostly influenced by Henri Lefebvre’s concept of the right to the city (Lefebvre, 1996), often read through David Harvey: “The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city” (Harvey, 2009, p. 315). Against this background, several studies have demonstrated the potential of public space for spontaneous everyday practices, open-ended social encounters (Frers & Meier, 2007; Liggett, 2003; Watson, 2006), and practices of resistance (Paddison et al., 2003).

Further analyzing how these practices play out in public spaces, Michel de Certeau differentiates strategies from tactics (de Certeau, 1984). Strategies are based on a location, which is appropriated and used to exert control; it is a form of power that relies on domination of space and of the ordering of activities within this space. Tactics, on the other hand, consist of opportunistic everyday practices that can subvert the strategic control over space, but only for a limited time. He expands on the latter:

Rather than remaining within the field of a discourse that upholds its privilege by inverting its content [ . . . ] one can try another path: one can analyze the microbe-like, singular and plural practices which an urbanistic system was supposed to administer or suppress, but which have outlived its decay; one can follow the swarming activity of these procedures that, far from being regulated or eliminated by panoptic administration, have reinforced themselves in a proliferating illegitimacy, developed and insinuated themselves into the networks of surveillance, and combined in accord with unreadable but stable tactics to the point of constituting everyday regulations and surreptitious creativities that are merely concealed by the frantic mechanisms and discourses of the observational organization. (de Certeau, 1984, p. 96)

With the use of the conceptual pair strategy-tactic, de Certeau places his argument in a field of tension. On the one hand, he concedes ground to more rigid and stable conceptualizations of society, as reflected in Bourdieu’s term habitus and his description of the social field (Bourdieu, 1984, 1990), or in Foucault’s work, which suggests more stable and overarching relations of power that found form in ideas like the panopticon, a society of surveillance, and, in his earlier work, the ordering of things and ideas (Foucault, 1995, 2002). On the other hand, he maintains a close connection to the manifold and manifest practices of everyday life that often escape these systems of control and that have the potential to proliferate and thus undermine and eventually change structures (Ziegler, 2004). These practices have been celebrated as “counter-panoptic spatial practices” (Genosko, 2009) that can flee the panopticon imagined by Foucault. The performers of the practices, “microbe-like” for de Certeau, have also been described as a “multitude” in their capacity to engender change—even though the whats and hows of this multitude remain contested (Hardt & Negri, 2004; Rancière, 2010; Tampio, 2009; Žižek, 2004).

Everyday practices like wandering or walking (Lorimer, 2011; Myers, 2011) and fringe practices like urban exploration (Garrett, 2010; Pinder, 2005) have been particularly analyzed as practices of resistance, as they and their trajectories do not follow planned routes and thus might redefine rules and structures in public spaces. Other examples of practices of resistance include skateboarding (Borden, 2001; Chiu, 2009), tagging, painting graffiti, street art performances (Dickens, 2008; Simpson, 2011), and guerrilla gardening (Hardman & Larkham, 2014; Reynolds, 2014). While impromptu performances, flash mobs (Molnár, 2013), or street art (Visconti et al., 2010) are often referred to as instances of or opportunities for social change; however, their actual effects remain understudied. To some degree this is also true for the more obviously political forms of resistance in the public space which might result in direct or indirect harm, and even the injury or death of those who enact it by (para-)military or police forces. Accordingly, we use a wide understanding of the term resistance to encompass both symbolic and physical or violent practices that question, undermine, or attack the symbols and concrete manifestations of dominant structures, norms, rules, or a social order as a whole.

If the “right to the city” is at stake here, however, it is not enough to reflect only on the possibilities for alternative developments or artistic ideals. It becomes necessary to study the manifold ways in which such practices, entities, or events enter the practices of those who witness or are merely co-present in the places where they occur and whether they remain in place or in practice as time passes. How far can these temporal, spatial, and social limitations be overcome, extended, or at least addressed? If resistance is to be analyzed more thoroughly, three distinct aspects of resistance in public spaces—distinction, duration, and expansion—need to be examined in-depth.

Distinction

The need for a critique of overly optimistic analyses of the potential for change in urban encounters and performances of resistance is one of the main motivations behind this contribution. In particular, the relevance of social inequalities appears to be systematically underestimated (Valentine, 2008). To grapple with these issues, the tension between the political potential for change that can be activated through resistance’s case-specific aesthetics and the manifold ways in which these aesthetics might stabilize or enforce existing social boundaries must be explored. Put crudely, this can be understood as the conflict between two views on the nature of resistance and what it should be. One perspective sees revolutionary potential in more artistically oriented forms of protest that focus on aesthetic expression. The claim here is that these forms of resistance can challenge and change existing regimes of representation (like in media texts); they make things formerly unsaid and invisible speakable and visible. Another perspective argues that physical, directly political, and/or economical forms of resistance are of central importance because these can change actual practice rather than just forms of representation. Put even more bluntly, this can be characterized as the conflict between mind and matter. Is change cause by changing people’s perceptions, or by imposing obstacles, disrupting routines, and forging new paths? What is the solution to this conflict? Is there a golden, middle, or “third” way—or would this be just another smokescreen for conflict that cannot easily be resolved?

We approach this problem by focusing on the issue of distinction and its possible effects. To this end, we briefly present a number of possible approaches to the realm of aesthetics, ranging from a “classic” sociological view on issues of taste and distinction to the sensual and embodied qualities of aesthetic practices. The final section of this article further explores the subject of aesthetics.

From a Bourdieuan perspective, it is necessary to explicitly reject an academic and intellectualist bias (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) that puts particular weight on issues of representation, on language, symbols, and aesthetics that are valued and required for success inside academia. This bias affects both those who perform practices of resistance and those who study these practices. The social position of the performers depends on specific cultural practices of resistance that distinguish them from others. Practices of resistance are thus also expressions of social position. Researchers are also affected because their position in the social field affects the issues and persons with whom they deal. Access to others with a comparable social position, similar academic training and political and aesthetic preferences is easier. Participation in such practices might then be free, as we are invited or even obligated to participate in political events or performances of resistance through our networks. This is, of course, a legitimate way to gain access to the field or to research data (Lofland et al., 2006), but it also comes with specific responsibilities. Understanding the inner workings of this network and interacting with others who share our position and interests is naturalized to a degree. This makes the perspective of outsiders difficult to understand as it would at least require a concentrated effort and might result in possible sanctions from inside the network, since trying to understand the point of view of outsiders, those who are wrong or deluded, might be perceived as taking their side.

Second, the aesthetics of practices of resistance affect what we see and how we respond to what we experience. Equipped with the conceptual tools and insider knowledge about the issues at stake and their possible implications, academic observers understand acts of resistance more easily than outsiders—at least when they share a similar social position or milieu with the performers of these acts of resistance. Based on this positional knowledge, codes can be deciphered, symbols placed into the right contexts, and modes of expression that require more resources for correct interpretation, such as satire and irony, can be understood. The new “counter-culture of modernity” (Bauman, 1986) might look at the simplicity of the old left and its focus on working class action as a sign of humorlessness (Bauman, 1986). Caught up in and delighted by participation in more complex, layered, and rewarding forms of communication and exchange, it can underestimate or completely miss the obstacles to accessing these modes.

Third, the aesthetics of practices of resistance also affect how we experience events and what we feel about them. Acts of resistance are always embodied in certain ways (Dosekun, 2015). They are simultaneously enacted and experienced and they elicit different emotional responses in different individuals, attracting some while repelling others. What might be an expression of delight and freedom for one person might, depending on highly individual factors but also on other issues such as group affiliation or social and cultural background, be experienced as shameful and intrusive by another. Understanding how an act of resistance is experienced by others, each with their own bodies with accumulated, embodied histories, and memories, requires more than a passing glance at an audience or at those who witness an event (Gibbs, 2013).

The issue at stake here is not that acts of resistance in public space should necessarily be accessible to everyone or that they should please everyone. The goal might also be the opposite, to provoke others with different attitudes or experiences. Taking the distinctive (and thus) exclusive edge out of an act of resistance might be counterproductive and make the whole exercise meaningless, but this depends on what is to be achieved, who is to be convinced, and on the ethics behind the wish for social change. In any case, it is the task of academic researchers to analyze these relations, their possibilities as well as their limits. There is also the question of whether or not awareness of our bias should shape our research and if so, how. Should we only address those of similar educations and backgrounds, or should we try instead to change the way groups different from us act and react? The question of who actually witnesses an event and the nature of their role, not merely as observers but also more emphatically as witness (Lévinas, 1998), needs to be addressed.

Only after doing this, only after tracing the exclusions and inclusions, the preferences, and biases and how they play out at the site and in bodily affect, only when we are aware of our own position and consider our experiences and preferences in a self-reflexive way (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992) and consider our specific social position, only then does it becomes possible to judge how the practices of resistance actually unfold for the individuals involved in each case. This issue becomes especially virulent if democratic values and increased participation is part of the political agenda—whom do the protesters want to have on board and whom would they rather exclude? Working through the often implicit layers of meaning that are invoked during a performance or an event and its witnessing can be a demanding process (Aytekin, 2017; Cobb, 2015; Harrison, 2008), but it is exactly this systematic questioning of a supposed normality or usual way of doing things that is at the heart of critical academic research and engagement. We argue that a systematic approach is needed in this area in particular, because we, as academics, have specific biases that make exactly this kind of critical reflection both academically and personally challenging.

Duration

How long does the event last? When do the last traces of an act of resistance disappear? To answer these questions, we have to follow several different trajectories, some inscribed in people or unfolded through interactions with others, others embedded in technologies or places. Most of these trajectories cannot exist on their own for long, they need to be supported by each other in order to continue their momentum and sustain their initial motivations (Frers, 2015).

Small-scale, quotidian practices that challenge a social order in their own peculiar way need to be continuously enacted; they need to become a tactical routine. This way, they gain more presence and, over time, their accumulated weight in public space can potentially establish another, different normality—one that is not governed from above but is the result of the small, possibly minimally conscious actions of many. How important is the single event, the impulse that starts something? Can it have enough weight too? Here, different traditions focus on different aspects, some on the sphere of practices, some on the sphere of subjectivities. At this stage, we do not want to choose one of these alternatives but rather explore different ways of approaching the difficult question of duration. De Certeau and his focus on everyday practices such as walking in the city is often invoked in the context of practices of resistance and their academic representations. When, however, does a parkour (Mould, 2009) or an ephemeral visual display (Murphy & O’Driscoll 2015) change from being a single event into something more lasting? Dewsbury (2007), on the other hand, discusses the logic of the event based on Badiou (2005). While this is not the place to discuss the merits of nonrepresentational theory and its relation to politics in general, the role of political subjectivity is directly relevant. Dewsbury follows Badiou in stating that it is not just the event as such that is important—even though it might show a “truth” (about the subject, the world, politics, power)—it is the fidelity to the event that makes it an event in an emphatic sense. Fidelity is needed, the truth of the event has to be evoked, it needs to affect the subject again and again to prevent its fading away (Dewsbury, 2007; Feltham, 2005). This fidelity is also what makes events in Badiou’s emphatic sense so rare. This should also caution analysts of singular events, be they political or artistic in nature, against summoning this term too early and too easily. The importance of repetition to approaches focusing both on practice and on subjectivities is thus clear. Repetition is needed, longitudinal research is rare, the aftermath of exciting events can appear to be incredibly dull. Not much happens. Here, again, academia’s obsession with subjectivity and its emphasis on thoughts and words should be taken with a few grains of salt, distributed over a longer period of time, otherwise swallowing a supposed truth might come too early, too easily. What constitutes an epistemological break for the subject is not easy to say and, as both Badiou and others arguing from a different, more structuralist perspective argue, in order not to fade away, it needs either to establish a location, or to be re-enacted and re-experienced.

Seen from a more mundane perspective, the issue of duration also implies the need to include places and materialities into the discussion of resistance’s temporality. How does resistance manifest itself in place? How do performances affect the built and/or natural environment? What kind of traces do they leave? The question of maintenance becomes important in this context too (DeSilvey, 2012). Resistance can rely on not performing maintenance, thus eventually leading to the erosion of a spatial and/or material order (this idea seems to fit uncomfortably with Badiou’s fidelity, thus pointing to a possible understanding of resistance taking place outside the realm of truth and subjectivity/thought), or on renewing and sustaining a display or the order of things in place.

The afterlife of an act of resistance also needs to be taken into account. After its initial performance, it can leave traces or create resonances that prolong its duration (Murphy, 2017). What happens during this process? What kind of afterlife is being created, one dominated by the absence of what has originally happened, populated by ghosts and specters that haunt a later presence (Hetherington 2001; Meier, 2013), or one dominated by lived practices and interactions? Both the experience of absence and the experience of a new presence can contribute to the duration of an act of resistance and both can have powerful effects that intervene in the politics of public places (Meier, Frers, & Sigvardsdotter, 2013). The analysis of re-stagings, repetitions, and new presences on the other hand is more straightforward and would resemble the analysis of the original event. Traces and resonances require a different approach, but are guided by similar awareness of possible false shortcuts. The effect of an experienced absence relies on the ways in which the absent can connect to those who are now present, on how deeply it reaches into them and the kind of associations and emotions, the kind of affect it raises (Degnen, 2013). It is therefore important to inspect what traces remain, and how these are experienced by different people. Here, again, the issue of distinction can come into play (Frers, 2016). The difference in witnessing an event in co-presence is twofold. First, the appeal to preexistent, embodied memories is not as important when one is present, as witnessing the act itself can create these associations. Second, the trace itself is of great importance when the act lies in the past—how does the trace enter the experience, what kind of affect does it evoke? Since the trace might evoke a different array of emotions, the materiality and feel of the trace, its sensuous nature, is important (DeSilvey & Edensor, 2012; Meyer, 2012). Trash, smells, tags, ruins—their appeal can be very different from the appeal of the activities that occurred during the original performance. Such traces can attract and repel, they can evoke memories, but they do so as traces that are encountered by different people in different contexts.

The final point in our discussion of the temporality of resistance is the host of different technological arrangements subsumed under the term media. When talking about the role of technology in relation to temporality, the first point of relevance is the possibility of storing and accessing “data” or information in different forms and in ways that transform them into a variation of Latour’s immutable mobiles (Latour, 1986). Perspectives on an event can be created and presented in an almost unchanged form at a later time and in a wildly different context. While different from participating in the original, sequential, and always to a degree open-ended action, such recordings provide access to what has happened. This provides a kind of proximity to the original event that is different from narratives produced at a later stage. This does not mean that, for example, a personal narrative about what happened is of lesser importance; indeed, it can be as or even more effective than the original event. This also does not mean that such a recording is more objective or less true than a trace or the account of a participant or witness. It just means that technologies and what can be described as media provide new and different access routes to whatever has happened. This concerns both the quantity—as in the number of people who can access the recording and the duration of this access—and the quality—as in the different forms the recording takes such as photograph, video, tweet, interview, and so on—of encounters with whatever happened. All these recordings are compounds of more or less personalized narratives and data or information that exceeds an individual’s or group’s narratives. This might be something that is specific to the recording, to an image, a sound: it offers an excess (Liggett, 2007) of information that goes beyond a textual representation and that therefore offers other ways of appropriation, other possibilities for reinterpretation, dissent, and exploration different from written accounts. ¹ It is thus crucially important to explore the different routes of an event through time, to analyze how a change in form and representation might also create unintended and manifold effects. The multiplication caused by thousands of people retweeting a factual or emotional message, a photo, or a video, can give events a very different temporality than a mere on-site performance. A delay is also possible, and the event can re-emerge at a different place and time for a different audience (Molnár, 2013). Images taken from prior events might serve as visual ephemera in other settings at a later point in time (Murphy & O’Driscoll 2015). They might also be locked into the memories of a few, posted once or twice on Facebook, and liked by a couple of friends until they fade away into the extended timeline, possibly being fed into the storage of anonymous data mining machines and gaining a new, uncanny life in their algorithms (Custers et al., 2013).

The trajectory taken by an act of resistance is quite open. It can quickly fade, but it can also explode or branch out into many different paths with unclear endings. It can lie dormant for a period, only to gain a new impulse when someone encounters it from the right angle. All these possibilities necessitate an awareness of temporality if the goal is to understand the actual and possible implications of practices of resistance. It is necessary to try to trace the duration of the event, the duration of an act of resistance. Yet the duration of an event alone does not say very much about its impact or relevance. Even persistent practices of resilience might have limited relevance. This limitation becomes evident in light of the following section on the spatial expansion of the event.

Expansion

The last aspect that needs to be accounted for in this context is that of spatial expansion. It should be clear from the discussion of trajectories that parts of the previous discussion on temporality also apply to spatiality. A trajectory—or any kind of movement—travels not only through time but necessarily also through space. Again, the role of media and technology is of central importance, as these can transport the act of resistance to other places. Videos can be broadcast live, similar to what happens during large sporting events, but they can also be recorded and later broadcast in vastly different settings to vastly different audiences. As in temporal shifts, these spatial (or situational) shifts also transform the recording or the mediated event. It is different from what happens at the original location. The recording can have a stronger or weaker effect than the original event; it can elicit the same emotions or provoke different ones. Its particular quality, however, rests on the fact that it provides access, that it creates a connection to the recorded and/or mediated event. How this connection evolves, how it is guided and controlled, how it emerges unexpectedly and against other resistances, or how it collapses and becomes irrelevant in other places—these aspects need to be addressed in what could be called a geography of the limits of resistance. Such a geography depends on the blending of two different effects, one connected to the technologically and socially mediated transport of recordings (whatever their form and format) and their display, the other connected to the way these displays are experienced at the site of their display.

The first effect shows the limits of the metaphor of expansion that we use in this context: a geography of resistance will not display an effect spreading in a uniform pattern before it suddenly stops or becomes attenuated with increasing distance. This extension instead will often be characterized by a scattering of numerous islands of reception and display of varying sizes. An event that happens in one place might resonate powerfully in a similar place far away, with similar participants, while the intermediate physical and social space remains largely unaffected. The accumulation of such smaller scale, island-like effects might contribute to the emergence of a different kind of appreciation in a different kind of population, on a different spatial scale, with another regime of affect created by a changed sociotechnological ensemble. The creation of these manifold and unpredictable effects would be akin to opening Pandora’s box. Again, in order to get a better grip on this, temporality as well as distinction should be factored into the analysis. Who are the people who replay a recording, who watch YouTube and spread the news, linking to it on other (social) media? How do they do this? What politics and aesthetics are at work? Who will be attracted or repulsed (Joslyn & Haider-Markel, 2014)?

To understand other possible effects, we again have to change the theoretical and terminological repertoire, moving from more classical understandings of space and spatial expansion to a phenomenological approach. To grasp the spatial quality of acts of resistance from such a perspective, we must examine their potential reach. What can they affect, whom can they touch or even grab? We use the term reach here to indicate a directedness that is missing in the term expansion. Reaching something is connected to intentionality—striving toward a goal or heading in a certain direction. This kind of intentionality is embodied in that it relies both on the senses and on a kinesthetic, mobile relation to the world (Merleau-Ponty, 2012). During the display of an act of resistance (mediated or not), the display is not a passive surface to be watched, instead it extends to those within its reach. The distance that can be bridged, however, is unique to every witness, every passer-by. The reach is limited by their bodies, the capacities of their senses, and their modes of attention, through their command of language and the accessibility of symbols and practices used in the display, through their preferences and tastes. When is someone touched by something? When do we let ourselves be touched? Here, Rancière’s “distribution of the sensible” gets a very embodied quality. The affective or emotional dimension also depends on situational factors and the way people feel when the display enters their field of perception—whether they are open to impressions or wrapped up in their own desires and feelings or any other mood that regulates what and how they perceive (Frers, 2007). Thus, our use of the term reach is not based on a merely physical understanding of space and distance, with possible factors such as disabilities factored in, but on a wider interpretation that includes affect and atmospheres, the way things and others are perceived in a specific space, and in the course of individual or collective trajectories (Edensor, 2012; Stewart, 2010).

Combining the media/technology-oriented understanding of resistance with a more phenomenologically grounded approach enables a multifaceted and hopefully more adequate exploration of the limits of resistance. Such a geography of resistance can grasp both how acts and displays of resistance can be transported over long distances into different surroundings and how situational and embodied aspects affect the way people connect to or distance themselves from these acts and displays—thus enabling a better analysis of their impact beyond the site of their original enactment.

Conclusion

This article has focused on highlighting the different kinds of interaction between practices of resistance and co-present others—be they part of the same physical surroundings or connected to these through different kind of media. We have not paid explicit attention to other features of resistance and their social, temporal, and spatial aspects. A full discussion of the limits of resistance should include a discussion of the role of social movements and their dynamics. Internal group relationships, recruitment processes, conflicts about value and direction, and associated longer term changes in a movement, affiliations with other groups, the whole discussion about nongovernmental organizations, political parties, and social movements—all these aspects and more have not been attended to. This decision is based on the approach in the literature and the conference presentations that we relate to and that also features in this special issue. It either takes its starting point in the (micro)politics of urban space, with place and spatial relations on center stage—Lefebvrian terminology, such as the “right to the city,” along with de Certeau’s perspective on quotidian urban practices features strongly in this context. Or it revolves around discussions of representation and political subjectivity—here, the logic of the event, read through Badiou or Rancière’s consideration of the politics of aesthetics, plays a major role.

Both perspectives are important for understanding resistance in public spaces, for how it is enacted and perceived at the same time, for understanding the unfolding of affect across space and time and for different people. As we have discussed in the opening sections of this article, the existing literature provides a rich and varied picture of practices of resistance and their dissimilar areas of involvement—ranging from different regimes of policing and surveillance to small changes in everyday life. Our contribution to this discussion is to provide tools for a more critical analysis of the actual unfolding of an act of resistance. To this end, we have focused on the aspects of distinction, temporality, and spatiality. This division is for analytic purposes, to sharpen the careful dissection of actual events into separate parts, so that they can then be inspected in greater detail. As the discussion of these individual aspects has already shown, however, this separation comes at a price. It does not apply to a number of different situations. All three aspects are interwoven in public spaces and in the practices of those enacting, participating in, and witnessing these events, regardless of whether they find them appealing or repulsive.

While we can provide analytic tools in this article, we cannot resolve the debate between the two different approaches mentioned here. Is a focus on practice, materiality, and action/disruption with its visible results on public space more important, or should we concentrate on the creation of new or different political subjectivities, on issues of representation, and on changes in the way people perceive and think about public spaces? Using a somewhat generous reading, both sides of this academic debate also include the other perspective in their approach, but there are also clear rifts between them. Is it enough or at least already a clear and positive effect if symbols are changed and new perspectives introduced (Aytekin, 2017)? Or is this something that mostly benefits those that already have a somewhat better standing, with resources to make use of arguments and symbols in the political sphere, while others are left out in the cold (Emerton, 2017; “Politics of the sun,” 2014)?

We argue that Rancière can be placed somewhere in between these two sides, even though he is primarily considered to be a proponent of the political subject. The “politics of art and aesthetics” (Rancière 2004) suggests a tendency to look at these kinds of patterns. In his writing, however, Rancière repeatedly insists on the fact that the “distribution of the sensible” includes both extraordinary displays (i.e., that which can be characterized as an event) and that the new regime of what is visible and invisible is based on the inclusion of both general practice and work in aesthetics. He argues explicitly against an analytic separation of these spheres because contemporary politics, understood as protest and policing, necessarily will include both sides. An understanding of criticism that would focus solely on issues of representation and its aesthetics is, in his words, nostalgia, or “deliberation on mourning” (Rancière, 2004, p. 10). He also points to both spatiality and temporality and production as a foundation for who is able to and is actually taking part in the political process. Aesthetics are thus understood here both in a more emphatic sense as located in the realm of arts, “a mode of articulation between ways of doing and making, their corresponding forms of visibility, and possible ways of thinking about their relationships” (p. 10), and in a wider meaning encompassing the senses, as “forms determining what presents itself to sense experience” (p. 13).

Seen from a perspective that is keenly aware of possible intellectualist bias, a potential problem with Rancière is that he writes from the perspective of arts and aesthetics (and their critique) and his reception is thus shaped into a discourse and placed in a socioacademic field that finds it hard to question the aesthetics of a political/aesthetical avant-garde or bohème. From this perspective, new subjectivities appear in new aesthetic forms and thus have a strong appeal (Huston, Wadley, & Fitzpatrick, 2015). For us, this does not go far enough. We want to express the need for critical research on resistance to also include a critical take on our own perspective. We want to add this element of perspectival awareness to Rancière without discarding his approach, but encouraging a more critical and reflexive analysis of potential academic bias creeping into the analysis of practices of resistance in public space.