The Limits of Resistance in Public Spaces

From demonstrations, jaywalking, and graffiti to guerrilla gardening, public space can be used to stage multiple forms of resistance.These practices oppose dominant orders and the rules of established structures.They range from the micropolitical and ephemeral, such as revisualizing space through artistic work (Murphy & O'Driscoll, 2015), to more permanent restructurings of the material and political orders of public spaces.Acts of resistance carry very different personal risks for the activist and can even result in torture or even death.Examples of the homeless who challenge rules by occupying public spaces (Casey, Goudie, & Reeve, 2008) or by establishing temporary dwellings (Meier & Frank, 2016) can show the limits of resistance.The homeless might get chased away, demonstrations eventually end, and graffiti can be removed.While traces of previous resistance might remain and be remembered by some, the afterlife of instances of resistance is often obscure and not accessible to everyone in a diverse society (Frers, 2016).This special issue focuses on the limits of resistance in public space.With the exception of one theoretical article which suggests a threefold approach to examine practices of resistance, the articles in this special issue use concrete examples to explore the manifestation of resistance in public places and to examine where it fails to bridge sociocultural divisions.This issue analyses the manner in which the limits of resistance establish themselves and raises the possibility of expanding these limits.At the same time, however, since such an expansion might also mitigate the intended effect or even just the performance or act in and of itself, its desirability is open to debate.In short, the articles in this special issue go beyond a mere description and praise of acts of resistance to advance a more critical consideration of the ambivalence of resistance.Unlike the products of academic practices, characterized by Latour (1986) as immutable mobiles, acts of resistance are often very difficult to transport and "consume" in other places.To investigate their mobility and immobility, this volume addresses questions dealing with how acts of resistance are affected by the role of recording techniques, different media, and by the everyday use of public spaces.It also seeks to determine the limits of different kinds of metaphors such as the public space as stage, theatre, or gallery.Other issues include the difference between the event or spectacle and the everyday, the nature of the "claim," and different issues of ownership in reclaiming the streets and occupation scenarios.To this end, the contributors to this issue explore a range of highly significant and diverse cases in depth-diverse both in a geographic sense, as well as with a perspective that goes beyond the usual focus on Western cultures, and in relation to the actors and policies involved, from the negotiation of the bodies of pregnant women and images of abortion on sidewalk spaces to large-scale protests in places like Tahrir Square in Cairo, Gezi Park in Istanbul, and Tiananmen in Beijing.