Prefigurative politics between ethical practice and absent promise
'Prefigurative politics' has become a popular term for social movements' ethos of unity between means and ends, but its conceptual genealogy has escaped attention. This article disentangles two components: an ethical revolutionary practice, chiefly indebted to the anarchist tradition,...
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| Format: | Article |
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Wiley-Blackwell
2017
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/46972/ |
| _version_ | 1848797439764463616 |
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| author | Gordon, Uri |
| author_facet | Gordon, Uri |
| author_sort | Gordon, Uri |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | 'Prefigurative politics' has become a popular term for social movements' ethos of unity between means and ends, but its conceptual genealogy has escaped attention. This article disentangles two components: an ethical revolutionary practice, chiefly indebted to the anarchist tradition, which fights domination while directly constructing alternatives; and prefiguration as a recursive temporal framing, unknowingly drawn from Christianity, in which a future radiates backwards on its past. Tracing prefiguration from the Church Fathers to politicised re-surfacings in the Diggers and the New Left, I associate it with Koselleck's 'process of reassurance' in a pre-ordained historical path. Contrasted to recursive prefiguration are the generative temporal framings couching defences of means-ends unity in the anarchist tradition. These emphasised the path dependency of revolutionary social transformation and the ethical underpinnings of anti-authoritarian politics. Misplaced recursive terminology, I argue, today conveniently distracts from the generative framing of means-ends unity, as the promise of revolution is replaced by that of environmental and industrial collapse. Instead of prefiguration, I suggest conceiving of means-ends unity in terms of Bloch's 'concrete utopia', and associating it with 'anxious' and 'catastrophic' forms of hope. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:03:54Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-46972 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:03:54Z |
| publishDate | 2017 |
| publisher | Wiley-Blackwell |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-469722020-05-04T19:10:27Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/46972/ Prefigurative politics between ethical practice and absent promise Gordon, Uri 'Prefigurative politics' has become a popular term for social movements' ethos of unity between means and ends, but its conceptual genealogy has escaped attention. This article disentangles two components: an ethical revolutionary practice, chiefly indebted to the anarchist tradition, which fights domination while directly constructing alternatives; and prefiguration as a recursive temporal framing, unknowingly drawn from Christianity, in which a future radiates backwards on its past. Tracing prefiguration from the Church Fathers to politicised re-surfacings in the Diggers and the New Left, I associate it with Koselleck's 'process of reassurance' in a pre-ordained historical path. Contrasted to recursive prefiguration are the generative temporal framings couching defences of means-ends unity in the anarchist tradition. These emphasised the path dependency of revolutionary social transformation and the ethical underpinnings of anti-authoritarian politics. Misplaced recursive terminology, I argue, today conveniently distracts from the generative framing of means-ends unity, as the promise of revolution is replaced by that of environmental and industrial collapse. Instead of prefiguration, I suggest conceiving of means-ends unity in terms of Bloch's 'concrete utopia', and associating it with 'anxious' and 'catastrophic' forms of hope. Wiley-Blackwell 2017-10-02 Article PeerReviewed Gordon, Uri (2017) Prefigurative politics between ethical practice and absent promise. Political Studies . ISSN 1467-9248 Prefigurative politics; temporal framing; anarchism; Marxism; utopia http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0032321717722363 doi:10.1177/0032321717722363 doi:10.1177/0032321717722363 |
| spellingShingle | Prefigurative politics; temporal framing; anarchism; Marxism; utopia Gordon, Uri Prefigurative politics between ethical practice and absent promise |
| title | Prefigurative politics between ethical practice and absent promise |
| title_full | Prefigurative politics between ethical practice and absent promise |
| title_fullStr | Prefigurative politics between ethical practice and absent promise |
| title_full_unstemmed | Prefigurative politics between ethical practice and absent promise |
| title_short | Prefigurative politics between ethical practice and absent promise |
| title_sort | prefigurative politics between ethical practice and absent promise |
| topic | Prefigurative politics; temporal framing; anarchism; Marxism; utopia |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/46972/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/46972/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/46972/ |