The (de)politics of prefiguration: emancipation, aesthetics and neoliberalism in action

Pre-figurative politics has become prominent in contemporary forms of protest and social movements, including the Indignados, Occupy, eco-villages, and Gaza student encampments. Drawing on a historical comparison with socialist and anarchist prefigurative traditions of the working class, Jonas Van Vossole (ECOSOC/CES) and Andrej Grubacic (CIIS/UC Berkeley) critically discuss how contemporary prefiguration has emerged as both a symptom of crisis and a means of reproducing neoliberalism.