Staging London: Participation and Citizenship on the Way to the 2012 Olympic Games

Abstract

This article examines Rimini Protokoll’s 100% London and Occupy LSX as two performances of citizenship that took place in London in the build-up to the 2012 Games. Drawing on ideas of the ‘urban commons’ (David Harvey), ‘agonistic citizenship’ (Chantal Mouffe) and the ‘civic transnational’ (Michael McKinnie), we interrogate how our examples articulate transnational urban communities and the ways in which representations of the ‘polis’ are in dialogue with dominant rhetorics on participation and belonging. We specifically ask whether the dramaturgies of participation and citizenship which emerge in both examples transgress commodified and consensual notions of participation and create symbolic spaces where the ‘possibility of disorder’ might propose a ‘conflictual consensus’ and an agonistic practice of citizenship. We propose that while Occupy LSX encourages an agonistic mode of participation in the urban fabric, 100% London participates in forging ‘civic transnational’ subjects as a desirable practice of citizenship that assuages conflicts between the citizen and the state.