Toppling statues, affective publics and the lessons of the Black Lives Matter movement

Abstract

In this opening article, we explore how the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement challenges the traditional norms and conduct of the bourgeois public sphere. Ahmed argues how the White male body is abstracted in order to achieve a universal status (Ahmed) and how his ‘invisibility’ is his power; the socially constructed ‘invisibility’ of whiteness forces those people considered to be of colour to be ‘marked and highly visible’ (Purwar). We assert that this abstracting of whiteness, along with the dominance of rational debate leads to the patriarchal practices of the bourgeois public sphere. Utilizing Papacharissi’s concept of ‘Affective Publics’, we examine the extent to which the online and offline activities of the BLM movement – including the toppling of statues – charge social media with the capacity to act as a fully fledged public sphere. We conclude that the BLM movement exemplifies a mode of public participation that outstrips conventional thinking on the bourgeois public sphere and therefore can be taken as model for radically rethinking what a public sphere ought to be.