'Brutes'' and ''Pacifists'' meet politics of the act: violence, nonviolence and prefiguration

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1628617 (Table of Contents)

In an attempt to problematize the violence/nonviolence binary and the dogmatic forms they take in the context of resistance, this thesis starts by exploring the literature on nonviolence, and violence in revolutionary rhetoric. After a critical review of the literature, it turns to current debates on violence in confrontational militant praxis, which refers to nonlethal use of violence in the context of protest, such as property destruction and clashes with the police. This thesis argues that the confrontational militancy produces a “hardcore habitus” and sacrificial subjectivities fed by valorized notions of suffering. Identifying the dependence on the opponent – mostly, the stateand its violence within confrontational politics as the necessary conditions for the emergence of “hardcore habitus”, sacrificial subjectivities, and dogmatic forms of associations disabling critical commitments, this study then introduces prefiguration as an alternative approach. It argues that prefigurative politics secures the room for criticism, and precludes the ontological dependence on the opponent due its directaction- orientation and emphasis on micropolitics. Finally, drawing on the different configurations of success, temporality and the denial of an instrumental reasoning in prefiguration, this thesis discusses militancy within the prefigurative frame.