In this forum of The Immanent Frame, the contributors tackle the dual questions of the political and the popular.
Figurative publics: Crowds, protest, and democratic anxieties
Figurative publics: Crowds, protest, and democratic anxieties
As Nusrat S. Chowdhury writes in her introductory essay, “In this forum of The Immanent Frame, the contributors tackle the dual questions of the political and the popular. They focus on what Jason Frank terms ‘popular visualizations’ to recognize the cultural-political labor of imagination and representation. From their respective geographic and analytical locations, they inaugurate a conversation around the purchase and pitfalls of investing our collective political hopes and anxieties in the manifold figurations of the people as the crowd, the mob, the migrant, or the minority.”
Many thanks to Nusrat Chowdhury for cocurating this forum with editor Mona Oraby.
Beyond democracy’s imaginary investments
The figurative space opened up by a widespread crisis of democratic legitimacy has again filled the streets with multitudes banging…
“Populism” in Hong Kong’s contemporary politics
Given the complicated history of populism in the Chinese context, just how has the concept been used and received within…
Populism without borders
In order to grasp the antagonisms covered up by the discourse on populism we should, I suggest, relate it to…
Virtual populist regimes
In this contribution I will focus mainly on the cine-populism of south India and the Indian national populisms, which share…
Channeling populism
The first step toward a rigorous analysis of media and populism is to provincialize the influence of charismatic leaders like…
Figurations of menace
This essay is about fear, menace, violence, and the question of “the people.”
“Sing Hallelujah to the Lord”: Secular Christianities on Hong Kong’s Civic Square
Situated at what is arguably the founding moment of these 2019 protests, the popularity of “Sing Hallelujah to the Lord”…
The civic and the popular: Reflections on the Iraqi uprising
The recent uprising began in early October 2019 and grew into a spontaneous and leaderless protest movement that quickly spread…
Figurative publics: Conclusion
Writing these words in the time of Covid-19, there is something at once nostalgic and newly vivid about all these…