New Commentary at Society and Space

The editors at Society and Space were kind enough to publish a brief commentary on the ongoing
events here. From the Introduction:

In what follows, however, I would like to chart a slightly different course, instead exploring some of the geopolitical and historical imaginaries woven into the government response to the protests. I do so because those imaginaries––particularly those that frame democracy and human rights as universal values–––are paradoxical: the visibility of the protests in Taksim in particular has both attracted wide international media coverage and enabled many government supporters to discredit the protests as a minor incident organized and orchestrated by foreign powers bent on meddling in Turkey’s domestic issues. 

As Prime Minister Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan has argued repeatedly over the past weeks, “Taksim is not Turkey.” Closer attention to the spatial and historical imaginaries through which “Turkey” has come to be articulated helps us understand how politics and the political come to be defined as the work of privileged subjects in particular times and spaces. Taking these imaginaries seriously pushes us to explore not only potentially emergent democratic networks but also the longer histories and distinct spatialities of manufacturing democratic consent.

The rest can be found here.