Part of:
Ullrich, Peter ; Papst, Andrea ; Heßdörfer, Florian: Introduction: Prevent and Tame : Ideas for a new
perspective on social movements and protest. - In: Heßdörfer, Florian ; Pabst, Andrea ; Ullrich, Peter:
Prevent and tame : Protest under (self-)control. - Berlin: Dietz, 2010. - (Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung:
Manuskripte ; 88) - ISBN 978-3-320-02246-4

Heßdörfer, Florian

Papst, Andrea

Ullrich, Peter

DepositOnce (Techn. Univ. Berlin)

Peter Ullrich, Andrea Papst, Florian HeßdörferIntrodution: Prevent and tameIdeas for a New Perspective on Social Movements and ProtestBook Part, Published VersionThis version is available at http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:83-opus4-64272.Suggested CitationUllrich, Peter ; Papst, Andrea ; Heßdörfer, Florian: Introduction: Prevent and Tame : Ideas for a newperspective on social movements and protest. - In: Heßdörfer, Florian ; Pabst, Andrea ; Ullrich, Peter:Prevent and tame : Protest under (self-)control. - Berlin: Dietz, 2010. - (Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung:Manuskripte ; 88) - ISBN 978-3-320-02246-4. - S. 11–13.Terms of UseGerman Copright applies. A non-exclusive, nontransferableand limited right to use is granted. This document is intendedsolely for personal, non-commercial use.11Introduction: Prevent and Tame. Ideas for a New Perspectiveon Social Movements and ProtestThis book is a product of a conference on »Shaping Europe in a GlobalizedWorld. Protest Movements and the Rise of a Transnational Civil Society« whichtook place in Zurich in the summer of 2009. It brings together some of the empiricaland theoretical papers presented in two panels, entitled »Preventionism andObstacles for Protest in the Era of Neoliberalism—Linking Protest Research andGovernmentality Studies« (organized by Peter Ullrich) and »Taming Protest: TheRituals of Violence« (organized by Andrea Pabst). The scope of these panels andthe interconnectedness of the addressed issues are expressed in the book’s title.This book can also be seen as a result of our attempts to find new perspectivesfor researching social movements and protest in light of recent developments insocial theory. No matter how different these perspectives and their subjects are indetail, they follow a similar analytical intuition that is spelled out in Foucault’sconcepts of ›governmentality‹ and ›subjectivation‹. They aim to overcome the com-mon dualistic approach that predominantly sees movements and power (the state,government and others) as independent antagonists and thereby often ignorestheir entanglement. This assumption leads to an approach to understanding protestthat departs from the usual questions of »Who are they?«, »What do they want?«,and most importantly »What are the most successful movement strategies?«. Tothese, we would like to add »To what degree can aspects of power, the state, andthe structures of government also be found within movements themselves?« Thisperspective, we think, enables us to see movements more as part of the societalwhole than as the ›other‹ or ›outside‹.With this book we do not claim to offer a comprehensive overview of all of theimplications which governmentality and subjectivation studies may have for pro-test research, but all of the papers collected here do, in one way or another, try toestablish and conceptualize such a link. Given that commonality, however, onecan distinguish among these contributions quite a range of different starting pointsand foci of analysis.Of course the state still is a core actor. On this level, the demarcation betweenlegal/illegal is still the primary mode shaping basic forms of conduct. Criminali-zation is a basic tactic for dealing with unwanted behavior like protest. This stronglyaffects activists’ opportunities, behavior, and thinking, thereby fundamentallychanging the interrelatedness of activism and power. The paper by Andrej Holm andAnne Roth describes a case of the criminalization of protest by constructing asso-ciations between left wing activists and terrorism. The allegations in this casecould not be sustained, but gave authorities the chance to conduct extensive inves-tigations into the left wing scene, generating intelligence to be used for the furtherMS 88_PREVENT_K_alles  18.11.2010  11:14 Uhr  Seite 1112policing of protest. As Holm/Roth make remarkably clear, what the alleged ›ter-rorist‹ activists had to go through while being subjected to massive police surveil-lance, imprisonment, and interrogation is hard to overestimate and will leave alasting imprint in their minds. Besides the repressive aspects one must also askwhat preventive effects such practices may have. To what degree will this constantthreat of ›special treatment‹ inhibit activists from engaging in protest and activismin the future?Michael Shane Boyle analyzes the criminalization of the VolxTheaterKarawanefollowing their participation in the demonstrations against the 2001 G8 summit inGenoa, Italy. As part of a carnivalesque activist tour for migrant rights, the grouphad been performing in Europe for a month prior to being arrested just outside ofGenoa. Similar to the case described by Holm and Roth the group was chargedwith forming a criminal organization and subjected to indefinite detainment,harsh interrogation, and even torture by Italian authorities.While criminalization is clearly a very authoritative act of governmental insti-tutions, there are ›softer‹ or more subtle techniques, especially different forms ofsurveillance, the use and effects of which are important to recognize. Compared toopen criminalization, practices of surveillance work not only on the state level butby spreading pandemically throughout the social body, into public space, work-places, the media, and our homes. Based on this diagnosis, Florian Heßdörfer’spaper sketches a fundamental link between the process of subjectivation and ex-periences of visibility. While visibility plays an increasingly important role in thesocial field—from media technologies to public security efforts—protest actionsand strategies also transform themselves according to the changing conditions ofvisual culture. But on this spectacular field protest/movements tend to conceptua-lize themselves as a mediatized public event and are in danger of forgetting abouttheir work of negation and its articulation.While this can be read as an unintended consequence of taming the potentialpowers of protest, the book also deals with more specific forms of subtly hinder-ing resistance. This is the focus of Marco Tullney’s contribution. He shows thatsurveillance technology in the workplace is not only a means of effectively orga-nizing production and optimizing the workforce. It can also be used to hinder em-ployee protest, and it is intended to have this effect. Most importantly, workplacesurveillance is perceived by employees as a means of suppressing their laborrights and thereby limits their opportunities to organize.The preventionist aspects of protest policing have a social background thatgoes far beyond the field of political activism. Prevention, Peter Ullrich explainsin his initial paper, has become an issue in all areas of life, especially in the healthcare sector. Gaining legitimacy from this field, preventive thinking (e.g. »Have Igotten enough exercise this week?«), supported by extensive apparatuses of sur-veillance and control, has a tendency to infect all areas of life with an instrumentalrationality aimed at optimizing the personal self. One major effect of this rationa-MS 88_PREVENT_K_alles  18.11.2010  11:14 Uhr  Seite 1213lity is that it makes people think that their grievances result from individual mis-behavior rather than social structures. This, Ullrich argues, may have the effect ofdelegitimizing protest by undermining one of its basic preconditions: the legiti-macy of social critique.The preventionist perspective can also be incorporated by social movementsthemselves. Darcy K. Leach and Sebastian Haunss trace the implicit impact ofcriminalization in the context of two multi-day protests in Germany, specificallyactions against a nuclear waste transport to Gorleben in March 2001 and againstthe G8 meetings in Heiligendamm in 2007. In their two case studies they analyzehow the »violence question« affects the capacity for cooperation among diversemovement groups. The spotlight is thus not on criminalization strategies by stateofficials or journalists but on the question how activists, in navigating complexdebates about the (il)legitimate use of violence, activists themselves often attemptto tame other factions/groups within their own movement. In examining theseprocesses, Leach/Haunss demonstrate the effects of intra-movement tamingrituals and highlight conditions that facilitate sustainable cooperation amongdiverse activist groups, despite the state’s efforts at criminalization. Against the background of these developments, the aims and means of protestseem to change. But perhaps the whole logic of acting against something shouldbe called into question? This at least is the concern of Nick Montgomery’s contri-bution. He focuses on the recent actions and discourses around the 2010 Anti-Olympics Movement in Canada and analyzes two major approaches taken in thisoppositional field: the ›classic‹ one of civil disobedience and the one of counter-hegemony following the work of Gramsci and Laclau/Mouffe. In analyzing theAnti-Olympics movement, the author recognizes the emergence of new forms ofprotest that cannot adequately be conceptualized within the framework of thesetwo logics of protest, and suggests that we transcend them. Building on the con-cept of ›minoritarian politics‹ proposed by Deleuze and Guattari and RichardDay’s notion of a ›politics of the act‹, Montgomery asks if the framework andfocus of »prevent and tame« simply ignores modes of resistance that exist outsideof this governmentality, such as that which Foucault terms  »counter-conduct«.Last but not least, we wish to thank the organizers of the Zurich conference andall those who took part in the discussions. Without them this book would not havebeen possible. We are also indebted to those who helped the non-native speakerswith some language issues, especially Michael Shane Boyle, Petra Knorr, DarcyK. Leach and Nick Montgomery.Peter Ullrich, Andrea Pabst, and Florian HeßdörferLeipzig/Hamburg, June 2010MS 88_PREVENT_K_alles  18.11.2010  11:14 Uhr  Seite 13

Ideas for a New Perspective on Social Movements and Protest

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Introduction: Prevent and Tame : Ideas for a New Perspective on Social Movements and Protest

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