The urban political never sleeps: A framework for tracing emergent counter-responses to depoliticisation

Abstract

Responding to contemporary mechanisms of depoliticisation, some marginalised groups create political arenas independent from the State. The paper analyses how these groups utilise ‘cracks’ in the political landscape to forge counter-publics which transform unequal power structures. Positing that depoliticisation is always incomplete, an analytical framework is presented for understanding how ‘the political’ emerges and evolves in unexpected spaces of everyday life. The framework serves as a means to overcome some of the limitations of Rancière’s political ontology to operationalise in empirical research through integrating his notions with an understanding of self-organisation based on complexity science. Drawing on empirical research in Egypt, the paper demonstrates how the fusion between public spaces and online networks created a precondition for counter-publics to gradually revitalise local urban politics. The paper concludes with analytical considerations for inclusive city-makers who aim to engage productively with the transformative potential of such emergent counter-publics.