ISA Online Guest Lecture: Derya Özkaya
In this lecture, I will analyze the distinctive features of Turkey’s Gezi uprisings of 2013 elaborating on the diverse, yet sometimes contradictory, emotional repertoire of mass mobilization. Building on multisited ethnography in two cities of Turkey and in-depth interviews with participants in the uprisings, I will scrutinize the affects and emotions that motivated the protestors to create alternative forms of resistance and coexistence, which in turn generated a collective sense of togetherness. I will analyze both the transformative potentials of, and the challenges posed by, the affective atmosphere of popular uprisings, discussing the fragility and limits of these moments of contention for political transformation. I will argue that the affective intensities of collective resistance triggered temporary alliances with distinctive experiences of solidarity and opened new possibilities for political contestations. At the same time, they have also led to the reaffirmation of the status quo by suspending the contentious issues of the past and suppressing the dissonant affects which are indispensable to popular uprisings. Unfolding the multi-layered emotional and affective dimensions of collective action, I will offer a critical intervention into common ways of analyzing popular uprisings and protest movements that opens new avenues for thinking about the complexities and ambivalences of politics and the political.
Derya Özkaya is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Southeast European Studies (CSEES) at the University of Graz. She received her PhD in Political Sciences from the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science at Freie Universität Berlin in 2020. She is currently working on her first monograph on the promises and limitations of collectivization, politicization, and mobilization of emotions and affects, building on her ethnographic research in Turkey. Her academic research interests are centered on the politics of emotions and affect, ethnographies of collective action and resistance, social movements and contentious politics, and collective memory, with a particular focus on Turkey.
Please login with a web browser: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82139410732?pwd=TlhHdXlaNzJVVjNBcEVoQlpMVXlKQT09
Meeting-ID: 821 3941 0732
Kenncode: M3keM2