Inappropriable Force: The Gezi Protests and the Politics of Refusal / Nazl Konya.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Konya, Nazlı, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Turkey--History--Gezi Park Protests, 2013.

Turkey.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY Fordham University Press, [2026]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In the aftermath of the global mass protests of the 2010s, democratic theorists have shown renewed interest in conceptualizing popular mobilization and the people. A series of provocative works have theorized assembled crowds in the streets as sources of democratic authority, legitimacy, and sovereignty. These insightful accounts nevertheless often remain detached from the full range of the situated experiences of protesters. Inappropriable Force brings the concrete, on-the-ground practices of Turkeys 2013 Gezi Uprising into the foreground of theoretical reflection, asking what people gathered in the streets shared, desired, or refused, and what their public experimentations with politics, language, and aesthetics made possible. Working from the empirical particularities of Gezi to political theory, the book theorizes protest as a political meaning-making enterprise that reconfigures everyday regimes of sense, speech, and engagement. Drawing on Gezis archives and engaging democratic and critical theorists such as Judith Butler, Giorgio Agamben, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Ranciere, Joan Copjec, and Rene Girard, the book identifies a surplus in protest irreducible to the categories of popular sovereignty, authorization, or legitimation. This surplusan inappropriable forcecan only be experienced in practice, through collective action. Not predicated on unified will or hegemonic claims to peoplehood, it unfolds in plural modes of thinking, sociality, affect, creativity, and imagination that emerge when people assemble out of doors. Adopting a practice-oriented and deparochializing approach, Inappropriable Force treats the political activities and cultural artifacts of the Gezi protests as texts of political theory in their own right. In doing so, it conceptualizes popular protest as a generative reservoir of political meaning and critical insight.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Introduction: A Refusal to React to Power on Powers Own Terms

1. What Unites Rather Than Separates Us: The Gezi Spirit and the Seductions of Sovereignty

2. Inappropriable Surplus: The Democracy Watches and Gezi-Envy

3. Breaking Billboards: Protest and the Politics of Refusal

4. Down with Grand Narratives! : Humor, Sense, and Nonsense at the Gezi Protests

Conclusion: Protests Promise for Democratic Theory and Politics

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed April 28 2026)

ISBN:

1-5315-1410-3