ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the concept of communitas advanced by the anthropologist Victor Turner, and suggests it has potential for binding individual fragmentary subjectivities and identitarianism (such as nationalism) back into a wholeness. Political subjectivity, when treated as a characteristic of individuals in markets, leads to fractured selves and societies, and to negative communities grounded in despair. Communitas is offered as a foundational and continuous power that can resist despair, particularly in moments of open political subjectivity and possibility, as suggested by feminist scholar Claudia Leeb. Moments of disorder and unruly politics are explored, with emphasis on two manifestations of unruliness – protest and aesthetic ruptures – asking whether and how the powerful but seemingly ephemeral qualities of such moments are sustained in political action. The workings of communitas offer new analytical tools for clarifying the operations of political power, informing strategies and integrating tactics towards a truly common good. An emerging articulation of power as communitas in contemporary turbulent contexts, the chapter looks beyond liberal democratic and pluralist framings of political contestation to grapple with ‘unruly’ forms of mobilisation that tap into an understanding of being-together-in-the-world.
