ABSTRACT
How precarious bodies become political subjects in a complex society is a generally ignored question in political studies. This chapter envisions a new political agency implied by the post-Fukushima activism. The protesters’ sense of ‘dissolved’ self and their political practices as resonating ‘experiments’ are conceptualised with the philosophical framework of new materialism and post-humanism, which celebrates impersonal agencies, involuntary relationships and non-purposive value-creation. Popular concepts within this framework, such as ‘cyborg’ or ‘assemblage’, are examined, as well as Bennett’s ‘vibrant materials’ and Ingold’s life as ‘lines’ which signify more non-territorial entities without identities. These concepts provide an alternative to liberal value based on autonomous subject and morality and suggest a more feasible vision of political agency for precarious bodies. While the liberal value of human rights still accepts the logic of a stable territory and (self)-mastery, the chapter proposes the concept of dignity in order to affirm vulnerable lives which are exposed to uncertainty, but still have the capacity to affect.
