Emergence of the Revolutionary Subject: Evolutionary Psychology and the Exaptive Tactics of the Everyday.

Abstract

This article proposes an alternative view of the revolutionary subject. By building on insights from the critical streams of evolutionary psychology, it argues for the notion of revolutionary consciousness to be grounded in the categories of 'exaptive actorness' which are most notably manifested in everyday micropolitics. By emphasising the role of contingency, spontaneity, creativity, resourcefulness and, crucially, formal indeterminism and autonomy, exaptationism emerges as an irreducible and irrevocable enabling tactic of subsistence and subversion, as well as the very essence of the revolutionary act. The discussion will turn to the case of the Arab revolutions to demonstrate the everyday grammars of present-day popular uprisings.