| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The question of making demands has become somewhat fetishized in the Occupy Movement, the one thing endlessly debated in each local occupation and in nearly all journalistic or academic commentaries on the phenomena. This is not without good reason. For to 'demand' presupposes at least two things: that there is a coherent object of need or desire to be obtained, and that there is some person, body or institution that can grant it. Neither presupposition however, holds in the context of Occupy, whose aims, make-up and decision-making processes change from city to city, and from person to person involved within it. While opposition to income in equality and control of financial institutions over public life are common themes, as is direct action and dialogic internal forms of consensus-building, these do not permit a definitive set of oppositional demands, at least in the traditional political sense. Occupy, then, is a hitherto unknown form of political expression.
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