History and the Sphinx: Of Riots and Uprisings
1.
Riots are the Sphinx of the left. Every
soi disant radical
intellectual feels compelled, it seems, to answer the riddle they hear
posed by the riots of the present, in Bahrain or Asturias, Chile or
Britain:
Why now? Why here? Why riot? These answers
generally come in a few simple varieties. First, if the riot seems to
lack focus or present clears demands – that is, if it is illegible as
“protest,” as in the case of the London riots of summer 2011 – the
intellectual will paint them as a “meaningless outburst” (
Slavoj Žižek), undertaken by “mindless rioters” (
David Harvey).
Invariably, attributions of unmeaning must find support in patronizing
sociology, rendering the rioters mere side-effects of an unequal
society, symptoms of neoliberalism, capitalist crisis and the ensuing
austerity.
