„Aggressiver Humanismus“

Politischer Widerstand im 21. Jahrhundert

Abstract

In this article I examine public engagement with matters of concern by affects drawing on an ethnographic case study on the Center for Political Beauty’s antagonistic artwork and practices of political resistance against human rights violations. Focusing particularly on the affective attachments between human and non-human elements, as recent work in Science and Technology Studies and Actor-Network Theory has emphasized, I identify and discuss specific productivities and problematics of these complex entanglements. My analysis indicates that these co-constitutive interactions between
heterogeneous elements, such as bodies, specific artifacts, technology, symbols or architectures, play a decisive although highly ambivalent role in the actual enactment of issues and publics. In times of increasing antagonistic endeavors of various actors across a broad political spectrum this focus on affective attachments might provide a useful just as critical insight into concrete “doings” of political resistance and its future capacities in current social controversies.