ABSTRACT
This chapter centres on one particular aspect of youth activism in an age of surveillance, exploring the role of arts-based strategies and aesthetics within young people’s political protest. In doing so, it addresses one of the key themes of the book, i.e. the paradox that liberal-democratic states ostensibly committed to democratic values now repress various forms of political action, including the use of artistic strategies within young people’s protest. The chapter works on the premise that this repression occurs not only through overt measures of criminalisation and control but also, in a Foucauldian sense, through the more diffuse workings of power within neo-liberal states. This highlights a further paradox, i.e. that the systems and institutions through which such power operates are also the very sites in which political dissent can have most effect. Based on a Rancièrian reading of a specific instance of political protest amongst young people in the UK – in which the very act of politics is seen as an aesthetic activity in itself – the chapter offers an optimistic intervention on this paradoxical situation. In particular, it illustrates how young people’s political dissent can disrupt existing power structures through an aesthetic reconfiguration of roles and places that also turns the diffuse operations of surveillance on themselves. This has important implications for art, aesthetics and activism, and the chapter concludes by arguing for a shift in emphasis from artistic activism to a recognition of the aesthetic dimensions of young people’s political protest and dissent.
