At some point during the ‘background’ lectures ND asked us to visualise a contemporary G8 meeting taking place, with an anticipated number of protestors controlled, managed, and allowed to occupy fixed spaces by the police. For no particular reason I’ve selected the 2007 G8 meeting. In this article documenting the protests at this particular conference, Toby Pfulger, MEP for the the left faction (GUE/NGL) of the European Parliament is quoted as saying:
[...] Those who invite the G8, also invite the legitimate protest. The expression of protest has to be comprehensively protected, at the least to bring the message of the critique of the [political content] of G8 [policies] across [to the general public].
Do google and google image search ‘G8 meeting protest’ once to see how this pattern of protests and supervision/ control of protests has been played out in every recent G8 meeting. Returning to the 2007 meeting, here is a map circulated by some of the protestors online- 
Why do these protests take the shape they do?
The key idea we touched upon, I suppose, is that protests function with inherited vocabularies, rhetoric, ‘styles’. I’ve tried to pin down some of the stuff ND was talking about during the first week onto a timeline at the bottom of this post. Keep in mind that this isn’t a list of ‘important’ movements or such.
If you wish to read up on modern history- I posses Eric Hobsbawn’s brilliant three volume survey of the ‘long nineteenth century’ (from the French revolution to the world war I) which I recommend to anybody who talks to me. If you let me know about books you own or can access I could list them here and that might be of use to everybody.
I believe the course aims to primarily trace the emergence of protest cultures as a modern phenomenon- we’ve got to be thinking critically about the idea of the nation state. ND recommended Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson. I have a copy, Arshdeep has a copy, the SDL has (I believe) two copies- but if you want I can summarize it for you. If you have access to another book which you’d like more people to read- let me know please. (Here's a summary I haven't read, which also mentions criticism by Partha Chatterjee and so on and refers to a revised edition I haven't read). I also have a copy of The Politics of The Governed which is basically a critique of Anderson's text by Partha Chatterjee, its good.
ND spoke about the importance of the body of the protestor etc and shook the class up a bit by speaking of how we were going to find Foucault’s work very important. I see only two options: either we do some tough reading or we don’t. I own a copy of Discipline and Punish that you can borrow.
Though she mentioned this in a later class, here is a transcript of a conversation between Foucault and Deleuze ‘Intellectuals and Power’ that I think fits into this segment, asking us to think critically about our relation as university students to the cultures of protest we are ‘studying’.
While I'm at it, here's another essay I found, by Aditya Nigam on Thinking about 'the Contemporary': Between Interdisciplinarity and Indisciplinarity. Personally speaking, I think as a twenty year old university student in a third world country studying english bloody literature if you haven't been waiting waiting waiting for a course like this there isn't much hope for you in life, but that's just one man's opinion of course. BASIC TIMELINE
[This is VERY basic. I'm considering making a timeline the old fashioned way, using pen and paper, I'll type it in if and when I complete it]
This is a scattered and absolutely non comprehensive timeline- these are NOT the most important events selected.
Also, I should ideally have entered publishing dates of texts. Knowing when Locke is born doesn't quite tell you when his ideas emerge in the public sphere. If this is of real help to people I will make the effort to redo it, if not we'll let it be.
c. 5 BCE Jesus b.
c. 30 CE Jesus d.
6th century CE Bhakti movement begins in the south
12th to 17th century CE Bhakti movement
"Pre modern protest movements tend to be religious, modern protests often retain religious vocabulary and rhetoric. Gandhi is an especially fuzzy case."
?what about peasant rebellions?
1623 CE Locke b. 'No government is possible without the consent of the governed'. Wikipedia calls him Father of Liberalism.
1757 CE Blake b. artist as activist?
Why does romanticism resonate so strongly in protest cultures today?
1776 CE American Deceleration of Independence. Frederick Douglass would later call it a 'pro-slavery document'
1783 CE Petition for abolition of slavery brought before Parliament. The Abolitionist movement becomes model for collaboration between privileged and victim.
1787 CE Society for abolition of slave trade formed
1789 CE French Revolution
late eighteenth century Latin-American wars of indepence begin
1817 CE Thoreau b. Civil Disobedience is not an isolated piece of political writing! Think about tax resistence in general
1833 CE Slavery abolition act
1848 CE 1848 revolutions in Europe
1871 CE Paris Commune
1886 CE Haymarket Affair: The condemned men shouted 'Germinal' as they were led to the gallows
1917 CE Russian Revolution. Hobsbawm- as important to the 20th c as the french revolution to the 19th
--- I notice one name strikingly missing here- what about Marx? If you're interested, I have an Introducing series book on Marx (which is basic, DL is a better option) and another on Political Philosophy (which you can borrow if the idea of such guides doesn't turn you off). I also have a book called Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History that primarily attempts to find meeting points in modern history where anarchism and marxism have come together- in the words of Staughton Lynd, one of the U.S's most influential leftists. Borrow it if you like. 