One of the most striking features of the Covid-19 pandemic was the surge in reactionary activism, from early anti-lockdown protests to the January 6 insurrection. We situate social movements and protest in the context of disaster, drawing on social epistemology to show why disasters lead to well-documented collective perceptual shifts and an urge towards solidarity that can surge both progressive and reactionary social movements. We explore the epistemic practices that shape reactionary social movements and right-wing radicalization, and argue that disasters are critical sites for studying the rise and attraction of reactionary social and political movements.
This article challenges conventional political imagination by exploring the possibility of a politics where children are equal to adults. My aim in this article is to identify the root cause of children’s political exclusion and propose a way to overcome it. I argue that this exclusion stems from a particular temporal structure—a teleological conception of progress that makes children a paradigmatic case of political exclusion. I connect this temporal issue to what Jacques Rancière calls “the method of inequality,” namely the infinite cycle generated by a promise of future equality that never materializes. Following Rancière, I argue that the only way to break this cycle is to take equality as a starting point to be realized in the present, rather than as a future goal.
