Abstract
Major debates on democratic renewal suggest two ways of eliciting social change: either by strengthening vertical practices of representation or by expanding horizontal forms of participation. The article develops an argument for why there is a need to rethink democratic resistance beyond the vertical–horizontal divide. If contemporary forms of resistance encompass a strategic interplay between vertical and horizontal practices, then an alternative framework is required to capture this logic. Filling this gap, the article introduces the concept of ‘horizontal experimentalism’. Such an idea comprehends an understanding of political means and ends as a continuum and as adjusting each other in an ongoing process of experimental inquiry.
Keywords
The most influential debates on democracy suggest two ways of eliciting democratic change: either by strengthening vertical practices of representation or by expanding horizontal forms of self-organization and participation. 1 Echoing earlier debates, however, the vertical–horizontal divide has been increasingly questioned by movements bringing together traditional structures and new dynamics. 2 Located within a subsequent decade of protest, these debates draw on the effects of the 2008 financial crisis that moved rapidly across the globe, accelerated inequalities, reinforced racialized and social hierarchies and unleashed a wave of uprisings: from Occupy Wall Street and the movement of squares, to Black Lives Matter, and Standing Rock, to the Gilet Jaunes and the Hong Kong protests and the Me Too movement.
Given these recent uprisings, a good part of the literature has paid more attention to the differentiation of the political repertoire and the scattered intersections of the vertical and horizontal strategies. Various concepts aim to shed light on these modes of organizing, including ‘prefiguration’, 3 ‘hybridisation’ 4 and ‘mutual contamination’, 5 which I refer to as ‘hybrid concepts’ in the ensuing sections. What has received less attention, however, is the role experimentation plays in democratic transformation. This article fills this gap and argues that the experimental shortcoming is, in part, the result of hybrid concepts still being too constrained by a binary notion of doing politics.
My argument is that we can find in the category of the experiment a valuable resource to advance our understanding of resistance beyond the vertical–horizontal divide. There are three noteworthy aspects to this assertion: First, I proclaim that the problem of democratic resistance is entrenched in a dichotomist scheme that fails to capture struggles escaping the binary rational. Second, to tackle this problem, we require a more adequate conceptualization of democratic resistance that can break apart the binary opposition by reworking its underlying assumptions. Third, to achieve this aim, an experimental revisioning of democratic resistance is necessary that allows the concept to be tiered more closely to an open imaginary.
The main theoretical contribution of this article is to develop the idea of ‘horizontal experimentalism’ as an alternative to binary or hybrid concepts. Such experimentalism is defined as a practice of democratic resistance that aims at expanding horizontal relations through experimental action. Whereas hybrid concepts such as the prefiguration of alternative societies reinforce the binary divide by giving primacy to ideal ends over action or vice versa, the experimental revisioning I propose offers an alternative view. Rather than referring to means as a political practice, movement or moment ‘in which certain political ideals are experimentally actualised in the “here and now”‘, 6 I apply John Dewey’s concept of means as ‘pivots in action’. Such an idea implies an understanding of means and ends as a continuum and as affecting and adjusting each other in an ongoing process of experimental inquiry. 7 In the same vein, I argue that the proposed idea of horizontal experimentalism does not seek to embody, mirror or strive to realize a pregiven end through hypothesis testing. Rather, it is understood as an openness-inciting practice of conflict provocation.
The article raises two analytical questions to investigate current forms of resistance. First, can democratic resistance be thought about beyond the vertical–horizontal framework, and what new possibilities for democratic struggles emerge from such revision? Second, how does a social movement that attempts to escape verticality and horizontality organize itself? To answer these questions, this article proceeds in four steps. Making the case for a nonbinary framework of resistance requires first that we disentangle the vertical and horizontal argument. The second section reflects further on three sets of concerns against the binary logic emphasized by hybrid concepts: the problem of representation, the problem of equality and the problem of multiplicity. After revealing the limits of hybrid concepts, the third section develops an argument for why we need to begin thinking about horizontal experimentalism instead. Two categories are employed to introduce an experimental approach to resistance: experimentation as an openness-inciting practice and the egalitarian relation to openness. The final section illustrates how horizontal experimentalism organizes democracy beyond the vertical–horizontal divide.
The vertical–horizontal divide
If we want to make an argument in favour of a nonbinary framework of resistance, we must begin reflecting on the question of why there is a need to revisit resistance in the first place. Thus, before taking on this task, it is noteworthy that the article’s intention is not primarily to contribute to the literature on democratic resistance. That said, the aim is not to problematize social movement scholarship, which here is mostly taking from liberal pluralist accounts for an analysis of political practices mainly concerned with autonomist debates. Rather, the benefit of the article lies in bringing together democratic theory and ongoing democratic struggles. To accomplish this aim, I investigate how contemporary democratic theory can transform our understanding of resistance. This exploration, however, will be necessarily confined by the limits of this article. Rather than spelling out my proposal in significant detail, I draw attention to the question of why we have to rethink the vertical–horizontal divide and why we might need to begin thinking about horizontal experimentalism instead.
It is common among scholars of social movements to trace the conceptual roots of resistance to a set of well-known ideas that oscillate alongside a vertical–horizontal axis. These two positions diverge particularly in their approach to the question of how a shared goal, namely social transformation, could be achieved. 8 On the one side, the vertical argument proclaims that building parties and taking power serves as the best vehicle for democratic renewal. 9 Opposing this view, however, the horizontal argument rests in the belief that collective self-organizing and inclusive participation can more adequately unravel existing patterns of domination.
Situating the binary divide within the historical experiences that gave rise to it reveals that the vertical argument emerged out of the experience of mass production and mass consumption in the Fordism era of the early 20th century. At that time, political parties were shaped against the verticality of production lines to mobilize the masses and confront capitalists with a workers’ vanguard. 10 Political actions typical of the vertical model include ‘manifestos and programmes, taking part in strikes, proposing legal reforms and constituting political parties’. 11 Such actions aim at winning over political supporters that, in turn, would help political parties to enter the structures of power and establish, from above, their vision of social transformation. In the next section, I will show in increased detail how assumptions about representative structures shape the vertical argument. Here, suffice to note that the vertical logic, according to Robinson and Tormey, ‘holds an image of power as a macrosocial resource which one can possess’. 12
In contrast to the vertical argument, the horizontal model promotes a concept of political practices that undermines the status quo while enforcing alternative social, political and economic relationships. In the late 1960s, horizontal advocates became more sensitive towards the multiplicity of struggles. At the same time, they became less sanguine about the role that political parties can play in representing new lines of social conflict, resulting in a widening gap between parties and social movements. 13 Whereas the vertical model in its earlier years gave mostly expression to an economic or class-based antagonism, the horizontal argument better takes into account the variety of differences of situated subjects. Ultimately, this approach allows for encompassing a wide range of strategic fields, including problems of racial and sexual discrimination, the exploitation of nature, colonialism and violations of civil rights. 14
To work towards a renewal of democracy, the horizontal model also differs in its position to the role programmes and political parties play for social transformation. As opposed to the vertical model, the horizontal logic draws attention to support networks and spaces for gathering, shared learning and solidarity. Its distinct actions include, for example, forms of collective self-organizing, demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience. 15 There is another aspect that diverges from the vertical model. Whereas vertical advocates often engage with political institutions in ways that focus on negotiating or influencing these institutions, the horizontal model rejects the idea that central political institutions can incite fundamental social change. Instead, advocates of the horizontal logic regard the spread of alternative everyday practices as an essential source for bringing about social transformation. 16 They, therefore, emphasize the interconnected, spontaneous and scattered dimensions of resistance, which intervene directly at the level of the body, habits and affects. 17 In that sense, the horizontal logic converges with those forms of thought and action that conceive of social transformation, often in terms of self-transformation.
Finally, the two logics differ on how means and ends are assigned a place. Whereas the vertical tradition places weight upon ideal ends to elicit democratic change, the horizontal argument provides a focus on the means, highlighting the importance that political means have to match the ends. In both cases, resistance is approached first through the question of which ends or means justify democratic resistance. This question is further accompanied by multiple ambivalences and uncertainties. For example, upon gaining power, horizontal movements can become an authority that wields vertical representation, and a vertical movement can relinquish institutional structures in favour of increased participation. Therefore, it is essential to note that the two logics do not dismiss the respective other logic as a valuable resource of democratic resistance, but they diverge in the idea of what should be given priority. To take our reconstruction one step further, it is useful to explore in the next section how the vertical–horizontal division became questioned by hybrid concepts of resistance.
The limits of hybrid concepts of democratic resistance
Whereas the literature has paid substantial attention to the vertical–horizontal opposition, its critics have continued to climb in number more recently. 18 By engaging with the literature of hybrid concepts, I further trace back three sets of concerns against the binary logic to democratic resistance: the problem of representation, the problem of equality and the problem of multiplicity. Beyond outlining concerns against the binary divide, I will also probe the limits of hybrid concepts. The aim is to explain why both concepts fail to considerably grasp contemporary forms of collective organizing. The primary target here is the inadequate way in which the means–end relation is envisaged. We will then see that hybrid concepts are still too constrained by a binary divide because of their reliance on the means-and-ends distinction.
To begin with, I examine some of the criticism against the binary opposition brought forward by hybrid concepts. The first problem concerns the concept of representation. Critics object that a common usage of the concept fails to acknowledge that self-organizing practices do not inevitably bracken from the idea of representation. The various forms of occupation and assembly, from Occupy Wall Street and the movement of the squares in Cairo and Istanbul, to the Spanish
There are two aspects to the problem of representation. First, we can see that whereas these uprisings reject traditional forms of representative leadership structures, representative claims can also be found in these movements. Occupy Wall Street’s slogan ‘We are the 99%’ stands out as an example. 21 Second, if representation amounts to the presentation of something that is not yet present, Spain’s 15M movement slogan ‘¡Democracia Real Ya!’ also entails representative claims. 22 The concept of ‘prefiguration’ and the idea of ‘prefigurative politics’ exemplify this position. Mathijs van de Sande explains, for example, that prefiguration refers to a ‘political action, practice, movement, moment or development in which certain political ideals are experimentally actualised in the “here and now”‘. 23 Accordingly, activists are ‘pre-enactors’ of an egalitarian future as the means applied in prefigurative practices and are deemed to ‘embody or ‘mirror’ the ends one strives to realize. 24
The second set of concerns against the binary divide devotes to the problem of equality. Critics point out that the binary logic cannot capture the egalitarian relation to vertical structures because it fails to recognize the ‘mutual contamination between horizontality and verticality’.
25
As Marina Prentoulis and Lasse Thomasson insist, there is a mutual contamination between horizontality and verticality because the very realisation of equality is only possible through some representational space, and such a space unavoidably involves some inequality and hierarchy. There is no horizontality without verticality, and no equality without inequality, because horizontality and equality are not natural, but must be instituted.
26
Finally, the third concern holds that the vertical–horizontal opposition is not sufficiently equipped to account for the multiplicity of doing politics. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s work is a good reference here. While Judith Butlers’s ‘performative theory of assembly’ examines how assemblies affect the conception of politics,
28
in Hardt and Negri’s
The distinctiveness of the idea of multiplicity is underpinned by a notion of doing politics that comprehends two ideas: ‘strategic multitude’ and ‘tactical leadership’. 29 Whereas tactical leadership describes a practice that restrains leadership structures to short-term tactical decisions, the strategic multitude remains responsible for the overall strategy. Hard and Negri use the term ‘multitude’ to refer to an irreducible multiplicity. The assumption here is that a political subject cannot be represented as a unified whole by any individual political actor because of its network structure. 30 This assumption is notable because such a view implies that democratic change requires the overturning of representative institutions.
How do Hardt and Negri then envision organizing the multitude democratically? If centralized leadership structures become necessary, they should, according to Hardt and Negri, be limited to a tactical role that operates on short-term conditions to coordinate local actions on specific occasions. The strategic multitude instead orchestrates the political direction, organizing the movement, balancing different interests and ensuring long-term planning and ongoing activity. 31 Ultimately, such revisioning of resistance allows Hardt and Negri to grasp the multiplicity of doing politics and the egalitarian relationship to vertical structures. If leadership structures are restrained to short-term tactical decisions while the multitude decides on the overall strategy, horizontal relationships can be expanded by new forms of constitutive powers and experiments in self-administration. 32 Decentralized leadership can be initiated at any time and by anyone, as exemplified by the ‘huddle’ structure that emerged as part of the transnational Women’s March movement. Huddles are not dominated by static hierarchies or a single leader but flexibly intertwine dispersion and unification.
As we have seen, although hybrid concepts might fervently disagree about the problem of the vertical–horizontal divide, they strongly converge in the idea that resistance thought has to exceed the binary logic. My argument, however, is that the division is seemingly irreparable within the constraints of hybrid concepts because the latter is still too constrained by binary thinking. The main obstacle to moving beyond the divide takes hold of the logic of reconciliation. Whereas the vertical and horizontal argument play representative and self-organizing practices off against each other, their critiques seek to reconcile these logics. As a result, they share, although to different degrees, a reoccurring theme: a reliance on the means-and-ends distinction.
The hybrid position is distorted because it does not conceive of the possibility that means and ends can adjust to one another in an ongoing process, something my proposed alternative of horizontal experimentalism seeks to capture in the forthcoming section. In the case of prefigurative practices, we can see that this position reinforces the binary divide because primacy is given to an ideal end over action. If we understand prefiguration as a ‘possibility-disclosing practice’ 33 that embodies or mirrors a pregiven end of an alternative society, such a position cannot adequately circumvent the binary opposition and respond to the problem of representation. Similarly, hybrid concepts are unable to conceptualize political means and ends as a more fluid, and hence, anti-subordinating process, because of their inclusive approach to the vertical–horizontal divide.
To be clear, there is no doubt that an inclusive approach can be one facet of democratic resistance. However, if we wish to grasp the distinctiveness of current forms of resistance, this strategy is insufficient because an inclusive approach remains confined to the frame of binary thinking. This issue becomes evident because one can only reunite something that one accepts to be a fully constituted and a fixed entity. In that sense, hybrid concepts may be beneficial to shed light on inclusive matters of resistance, yet they do little to address how means and ends for a given moment function as ‘pivots in action’. To respond to this shortcoming, I propose to employ John Dewey’s idea of ‘experimental inquiry’. Unless we can show that an alternative framework of resistance, whatever that might prove to be, comes to terms with the mediation of means and ends in a non-inclusive way, we will not be able to break open the binary horizon. The next section engages with this task more directly.
Rethinking resistance as experimental action
Given the limits of hybrid concepts of democratic resistance, our attention is drawn towards a decisive question: How can we move from a binary to a non-binary conception of resistance? To find a way out of this predicament, I show that we need to restore the experiment at the centre of the vocabulary of democratic resistance, something that contemporary concepts fail to do. My argument is that rethinking resistance as experimental action can transgress the limits of the binary divide. The argument proceeds in four steps: First, if we wish to move beyond the vertical–horizontal divide, focusing on problems of representation, equality and multiplicity is not enough. Given that hybrid concepts are still too constrained by binary thinking, any critique of the binary divide inevitably relies on tiering of the concept of resistance closer to an open imaginary. This implies, second, moving towards a deeper interrogation of the role openness plays in eliciting social change. Third, we can find in the idea of the experiment, defined as an openness-inciting practice, a potential to transform ideas about resistance beyond the binary opposition.
Finally, an experimental revisioning of resistance presents itself as a tangible alternative to binary and hybrid concepts because it allows for reworking assumptions about the means–end relation. Whereas the discussed positions perceive of this relation as either exclusive or inclusive to one another, my alternative points towards a more open logic of doing politics. By examining the role of openness and the egalitarian relationship to openness, I disclose that the means–end relation has to be understood as a continuum. Prior to this task, however, we must come to terms with some of the implications of an experimental framework. Why can experimentation be understood as an openness-inciting practice in the first place? This is to outline why an experimental revisioning of resistance is capable of circumventing the binary opposition.
Experimentation: An openness-inciting practice
An important reason that explains why the experiment should be tied to the concept of resistance pivots on the role that openness plays for political agency. This is a reading strongly invited by John Dewey’s experimental model. He defines the ‘quest for certainty’ as the key problem of democracy. 34 If we envisage with Dewey the primary task of democratic action as a continuous adjustment to social change, then placing resistance within absolute categories by prioritizing ideal ends over actions is counterintuitive. The problem with such a position is that it displaces ‘uncertainty by proscribing modes of action on the basis of moral ends’. 35 But the loss of uncertainty poses, accordingly to Dewey, a democratic threat, given that uncertainty describes a structural condition of political action.
There are two crucial points to take from Dewey’s account for our reconstruction of resistance. First, he develops the idea that ‘[p]olitical action under conditions of uncertainty is a process of experimentation’. 36 Second, Dewey defines democracy as a domain of ‘experimental inquiry’. What are the implications of those ideas? Dewey emphasizes that to respond to uncertainty, we need inquiry to regulate the consequences of action. For an inquiry to be successful, it should be performed experimentally, meaning that ideas have to be tested experientially. Finally, conducting inquiry experimentally requires democracy, in the sense that inquiry is primarily a social affair that depends on a plurality of perspectives brought to bear on the problems at hand. What are the benefits of this conceptualizing for a non-binary concept of resistance?
Dewey’s experimental view discloses far-reaching insights into the dynamic relationship between means and ends. What Dewey seems to suggest is that political means and ends affect and adjust each other in an ongoing process of experimental inquiry. But how does this adjustment proceed? Dewey adopts the view that ‘means can be justified only by its end. But the end, in turn, needs to be justified’. 37 In practical terms, such a position defines means and ends for a given moment as ‘pivots in action’. What might at first seem to be merely an instrument to be discarded once its goal is accomplished is instead the means that enacts the end in the course of its actualization. As I will show in the forthcoming section, the relation between means and ends is better understood as one not of applications but of confrontation. Political means and ends can adjust to one another when means are used to provoke rather than resolve inquiry. In that sense, the experimental approach to means and ends differs from the examined hybrid models. Given the dynamic relationship between means and ends, vertical or horizontal strategies can inform democratic resistance, but they will never become an end in themselves. In its place, openness is what democratic resistance is directed to. Consequently, from an experimental viewpoint, democratic resistance is defined by openness.
To illustrate what the actual organization of openness can look like, we have to further illuminate what and who this openness is to and within what kind of social group it appears. We can find an answer to these questions in the literature on post-foundational political thought. Such a tradition emphasizes that democratic resistance is inseparable from a notion of openness because of the contingent and contested nature of society. 38 If we accept contingency and conflict as a structural condition of political agency, then we can situate the task of democratic resistance in inciting an open future. This would imply challenging closures so that new voices and demands, which have been previously suppressed or silenced, can rise. 39
Having access to provoke conflicts is understood, from an experimental viewpoint, as a core attribute of political agency and a structural condition of democracy because it allows for participating in common matters and negotiating alternatives. At this point of our reconstruction, it is important to note that an experimental approach to resistance pivots around one decisive question: Who is deprived of the possibility of provoking conflicts? Who can resist, protest and provoke conflicts and for whom is this access denied or whose resistance is criminalized? Here, I think in particular of undocumented migrants who risk deportation when protesting in the streets. Equally, we see that people of colour expose themselves to higher risks because they are predominantly the target of racially motivated police violence.
The egalitarian relationship to openness, as I use the principle here, is then best described as the absence of barriers to conflictual action. If we say that the question of openness raises an issue of access to transformative action, then we talk about the openness of the excluded, oppressed and marginalized individuals and groups. The hashtags #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter as well as the WhatsApp Group of the Hong Kong protesters politicize the question of access in a prominent manner. By using the digital space as a means of organizing, they resist the appropriation by any group. Similarly, this strategy allows individuals to identify with the movement without formally joining it, making the boundaries of these movements more fluid. The Black Lives Matter movement, for example, is often described as ‘a movement of movements’ due to numerous affiliated campaigns. 40 Although willing to engage in policy discussions, it has no ambition to be the state. The question of how openness can be effectively organized beyond a binary understanding of doing politics is explored in the next section.
Horizontal experimentalism
Democratic organizing beyond the vertical–horizontal divide
In this section, I turn to the question of democratic organizing beyond the vertical–horizontal divide. As we have seen, two attributes lay the basis for the argument that an experimental approach to resistance can suspend the binary thinking that has governed our understanding of political action for too long: openness and an egalitarian relation to openness. On the basis of the literature discussed above, I will now refine the contours of my alternative approach through the lenses of two questions: How does democracy functions within an experimentally horizontal group, and how might a social movement that attempts to escape verticality and horizontality organize itself?
As explicated, the very realization of openness requires some sort of egalitarian relation to it that can be unleashed through experimentation. For this reason, democratic resistance, the way I discuss it here, is defined as a practice that aims at expanding horizontal relations to openness by taking down barriers to political action. This brings us to our second line of argument and the concept of ‘horizontal experimentalism’. My argument is that the principle of horizontal experimentalism can ‘organize’ democracy better than binary and hybrid concepts because of its open imaginary.
There are several assumptions built into this argument. Most considerably, political movements endeavouring to escape verticality and horizontality use means and ends as a pivot in action while focussing on one key theme in particular: the question of access to transformative action. A unique resource offered by the idea of horizontal experimentalism is a distinct understanding of the role conflict plays for democratic organizing. More specifically, it allows us to redefine conflict as ‘democratic provocation’ that has to continuously be invoked to incite openness and expand equal relations.
Provocations as a collective organizing principle
Conflict serves as an important feature of horizontal experimentalism. It also provides a lens through which one can scrutinize the fibres of collective organizing. Once we have examined the role conflict plays as an organizing principle, I argue, we will be in a better position to circumvent the binary divide. To grasp why the idea of conflictual action occupies centre stage in my argument, we have to bring together democratic theory and ongoing political struggles. This strategy allows us to shift attention from a problem-centred approach to democracy to a practice of problematization.
At first glance, deliberative models of democracy appear to be best attuned to comprehend the role of conflict for enhancing democratic demands. This position, however, has one decisive consequence for how we envision the role of conflict for democratic action. To the extent, I explain, that it aligns conflict as a civic resource from which to arrive to considered judgement, it is at risk of limiting democratic action to conflict resolution. It is precisely at this blind spot that the relevance of my proposed alternative surfaces. By combining agonistic thought with Dewey’s concept of ‘experimental inquiry’ and Michel Foucault’s idea of ‘experimental critique’, I reveal that conflict can serve better as a collective organizing principle when understood as ‘democratic provocation’. One assumption underpins the basic line of this claim: Political groups that function in an experimental way organize themselves effectively beyond verticality and horizontality by contentiously provoking conflicts over the means–end relation. Their purpose is confined to assessing whether the output of applied means and envisioned ends allow for new democratic conflicts or undermines access to public conflict.
In this regard, the idea of horizontal experimentalism differs from scholarship of ‘democratic innovations’ that capture conflict resolution as the primary principle of collective organizing. 41 What animates a large part of the deliberative literature is the idea that public engagement and consensus-oriented talk can generate novel solutions to a given problem and social conflicts. 42 Citizens’ assemblies, participatory budgets and the inclusive politics of civic lottery, for example, exemplify such a position. Their scope is to bring together various stakeholders, from representative citizens to state officials and academic experts, to extract the ‘wisdom of the many’. 43 The underpinning assumptions are that democratic norms can be agreed on by the many, and progress is a gradual learning process.
The problem with deliberative thinking is due, in part, to it coalescing around one assumption in particular: To advance political agency, neither self-organizing practices nor electoral forms of representation are sufficient. In contrast to ‘pure’ accounts of verticality or horizontality, its preferred path to respond to pressing questions such as climate change or rising inequality is marked by the following conjecture. Elements of horizontal forms of communication have to be tied to procedural strategies of conflict resolution to democratically organize effectively. Such a position originates in the idea that non-electoral forms of representation can open avenues into a more equal and just society. In this regard, the power of reasoning is widely held to be an indispensable feature providing a way out of democratic distress by stretching mutual understanding. Civic lotteries in the form of a randomly selected group of citizens is one example. Representative mini-publics mark another one.
What becomes clear at this point is that deliberative accounts seek to respond to the questions of access to political action by involving as many citizens as possible in the procedure of conflict resolution. This inclusive view encapsulates three assumptions: First, any attempt to deepen democracy has to be embedded in rational procedures that allow all members of the political community to publicly discuss and settle their common affairs. Second, these procedures entail moderated discussions that ensure reasoning on an equal footing with others. Third, in doing so, the deliberative settings stimulate openness by amplifying ‘social equality and citizen empowerment’. 44
Agonistic critics, however, object that such a view rests on the possibility of consensus and ethical agreement on the back of power and coercion. How then does my proposed alternative differ from this account? To the extent that my alternative places conflicts in a slightly different position. Whereas deliberative action is primarily understood as communicative action, a view that is most eloquently expressed in Jürgen Habermas’ work, 45 the alternative I envision is closer to agonistic models of democratic action. 46 Crucially, this position gives centrality to the flourishing of disagreement and contestation to disrupt and rework institutions by continuously opening them up and pluralizing them.
There are three noteworthy implications of such a view: First, if democratic norms are perceived as something that can be agreed on by the many, then one loses sight of the structural condition of democracy, namely that democratic politics is predicated upon conflicting alternatives. Second, because democratic demands arise at the level of the subjectification process grounded in conflictual action, spaces for conflict have to be continuously opened up. 47 Third, the role of democratic conflict is then best described as an organizing principle aiming to establish a moderate and ongoing type of contest that gives expression to constitutive differences suppressed or silenced by institutionalized practices and norms.
Given that agonistic scholars are primarily concerned with the limits of consensus, they shift attention to the question of how conflicts can be organized in democratic ways. It is for this reason that the idea of horizontal experimentalism presents us with another possibility to the problem of access than deliberative accounts of political action. Although the idea of horizontal experimentalism openly pursues the agonistic assumption that conflictual action serves as an organizing principle, it goes one step further and reconceptualizes agonistic conflict as ‘democratic provocations’. The act of provocation, I envision being realized through horizontal experimentalism, brings together Dewey’s concept of ‘experimental inquiry’ with Michel Foucault’s idea of ‘experimental critique’. Folding both ideas together allows us to shift attention away from a democratic practice primarily concerned with problem-solving and instead centre democracy as a practice of problematization.
In general terms, the idea of provocation, as invoked here, means a form of political action that, as Alexander Livingston describes following Dewey, aims to ‘
In Foucault’s essay ‘What is Enlightenment?’, the notion of critique takes decisive shape as a political practice of experimentation. 49 Crucially, his idea of critique is not primarily concerned with demonstrating ‘impermeable borders or closed systems’, nor is it a ‘task of making visible what is covered or concealed in order to finally arrive at the promise of complete transparency’. 50 Instead, what is distinct about it is that Foucault wants to make ‘visible precisely what is visible, which means to make something appear that is so close, so immediate, so intimately linked to ourselves that we do not see it’. 51 The proposed shift of attention brings into focus a view of ‘problematization’ that should not be conflated with Dewey’s problem-centred approach. Whereas the latter fails to fully understand the organizational capacity of provoking inquiry beyond a means to adjust to social change, Foucault’s experimental critique combines two critical activities: ‘it is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them’. 52 For example, an experimental critique exposes ‘normative categories, to put them to the test in order to assess and assist the development of a new normative grammar’. 53
If we understand with Foucault experimental action as the extension and perpetuation of a critical activity that never reaches a point of saturation, we can conclude the following: From a standpoint of horizontal experimentalism, openness, and hence access to political action does not follow democratic norms per se. Rather, it is the result of conflict provocation. In this regard, provocation is defined as a democratic practice that aims to keep the future open. However, the way provocations incite openness is not, as shown, by merely solving problems or reconciling conflicts but by testing whether norms and institutions allow or undermine access to continuous conflict provocation. Ultimately, such a view suggests that it is the access to conflict provocation that makes democracy possible in the first place. If we accept the contingent and conflictual nature of democratic orders, conflicts have to be continuously provoked in democracies to incite openness and expand horizontal social relations. The Black Lives Matter movement gives a glimpse of this sort of mobilizing, as does the disobedience of Extinction Rebellion’s climate justice struggle more recently.
‘Provocations’ as stakes and as repertoire
What does the realization of horizontal experimentalism in democratic resistance look like in more practical terms? The final section explores this question with reference to the article’s two key concepts: experimental action as an openness-inciting practice and provocation as a collective organizing principle. As shown, horizontal experimentalism is best described as a political practice that adjusts means and ends in an ongoing process of experimental inquiry to incite openness and expand horizontal relations. What is distinct about experimental inquiry is the practice of provocation. Political action, viewed from an experimental standpoint, provokes inquiry into normative institutions, ideas and identities to test whether they allow for the continuous provocation of conflicts.
In so far as we have conceptualized political action as a form of experimental action that is directed against the closure of conflict provocation, we can validate that the problem of openness is rooted in the restriction of the possibility of provoking conflicts. What we can say at this point is that experimental action, understood as an openness-inciting practice, creates the conditions – by provoking conflicts – in which to negotiate the terms of the future. Conflict, therefore, functions as an organizing principle because it stands for the constant disruption that demands an equal distribution of the possibility of provoking conflicts.
To facilitate a clearer understanding of how contemporary forms organize themselves today, I propose an analytical distinction: ‘provocations’ as
The distinction between provocation-oriented and provocation-enabled practices assumes that provocation is increasingly contentious, both in the sense that it becomes a locus of struggle and in the sense that it can turn into tools. This is most evident where democratic struggles are increasingly organized around matters of life and death, such in the case of Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, Ni Una Menos in Latin America, actions against the abortion ban in Poland, rent strikes in London and Data for Black lives campaigns. Because the proposed distinction marks an analytical dimension, the praxis reveals that provocation-oriented and provocation-enabled practices are often conflated. Experimental power, in that sense, stands for the fluid combination of struggles against the ruling authorities while fastening onto the ‘positivity’ of alternatives. Beraldo and Milan illustrate this overlapping dynamic in their work on ‘contentious politics of data’: ‘While advocating for the right to resist massive data collection, privacy activists might engage with data obfuscation practices in order to tactically affirm this right. 55
Conclusion
This article reconfigured democratic resistance by delving into the structural limits of binary and hybrid accounts. The aim was to supplement current discussions with an approach to democratic resistance that places the idea of experimental action at the front of its vocabulary. More specifically, I argued that the principle of horizontal experimentalism can advance our understanding of resistance beyond the vertical–horizontal divide by tiering the concept more closely to an open imaginary. As shown, the benefit that comes with an experimental revisioning of resistance lies in a distinct understanding of means and ends as a continuum and as adjusting each other in an ongoing process of experimental inquiry. Ultimately, such a reconfiguration allows us to capture the dynamic interplay between vertical and horizontal practices while also transforming our debates on both democracy and resistance.
