Speaker
Description
In this paper, I explore the contours of a phenomenology of walking-with that addresses the transformation of collective embodied movement in public urban space under current conditions of political crisis, particularly the erosion of radical democratic possibility. Revisiting the alleged tension between so-called political and critical phenomenology, I bring into dialogue accounts of capable-mobile bodies (Arendt, Merleau-Ponty, Husserl, Sheets-Johnstone) and vulnerable, precarious bodies (Butler, Ahmed, Salamon). I argue that the phenomenological figures of “we can” and “we cannot” bodies must be rethought in light of intensified anticipatory repression, securitization, and obstruction that pre-empt collective appearance—not only in authoritarian regimes, but also in so-called liberal democracies. Drawing on these sources alongside contemporary feminist reworkings of psychogeography, I analyze differential radical-democratic practices of walking-with in public spaces, focusing on (1) pro-Palestine protest marches in the UK, Germany, and the US, and (2) everyday feminist collaborative walking. Perhaps the radical democratic potential of walking-with under present conditions of crisis consists in nothing more—and nothing less—than the enactment of fragile, contested, and dispersed spaces of appearance.