Occupy Wall Street: Forcing Division

This presentation explores the most exciting development on the US left in more than a generation, considering it as an evental site and a political form. As an event, Occupy ruptured the political setting of the US left. As a political form it introduced an arrangement of capacities and intensities suggestive of a new political subjectification  (one whose viability remains fragile and uncertain). 

Some of the ideas that most galvanized people in the fall—those associated with autonomy, horizontality, and leaderlessness—contributed to the conflicts and disillusionment within the movement that plagued it over the winter and hindered what was supposed to be its spring awakening. The vision of Occupy Wall Street here sees it strength as stemming from its assertion of division, affirmation of collective power, and new mode of representation.

Biography

Jodi Dean teaches contemporary political and media theory at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. She is the author or editor of 11 books, including Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies (Duke 2009), Blog Theory (Polity 2010), and The Communist Horizon (Verso 2012). She is the co-editor of the international electronic journal of contemporary theory, Theory & Event, published through John Hopkins University Press.