Introduction

When collective protest develops in the streets and occupied squares, it becomes not simply a demand for democracy addressed to the disputed power but an affirmation of democracy effectively implemented. —Jacques Rancière As another cycle of collective protest reverberated around the globe in recent years, crowds again took to the streets and public squares of cities from Santiago to Beirut, from Hong Kong to Baghdad, claiming their elected representatives do not, in fact, represent them. In the United States, the largest protest movement in its history—the Movement for Black Lives—drew between fifteen to twenty-six million people into the streets of hundreds of different cities and towns, and did so in the middle of a global pandemic’s demand for social distancing. The local grievances which triggered these uprisings vary widely—an increase in the price of public transportation, a tax on a popular messaging service, a revised extradition law, searing examples of racist police violence—but all express dismay and disgust at the economic and political inequalities of the existing system of representative government and a common demand to return political power to the people themselves. “Our government is a government of thugs!” “Chile woke up!” “There are no rioters, only a tyrannical regime!” The figurative space opened up by a widespread crisis of democratic legitimacy once again filled the streets with multitudes banging pots and pans, occupying public buildings and squares, building barricades, and throwing improvised dance parties celebrating the coming fall of the regime. Amid the proliferation of ever-new technologies enabling virtual forms of assembly, political participation, and “preference ...