Translating prefigurative politics: social networks and rhetorical strategies in the alter-globalisation movement

Abstract

ABSTRACT The notion of ‘prefigurative politics’ was key to the resurgence of global activist politics that began with protests against the World Trade Organisation in Seattle in 1999. Prefigurative politics attempts to create alternative ways of being and relating within protest spaces and rejects the separation of means from ends. The politics of prefiguration orient protest not towards the realisation of demands in the future, but to the immanent manifestation of relationships and desires. In 2008, the alter-globalisation movement came to Japan when activists protested the G8 Summit meeting in Hokkaido. In the lead up to the mobilisation, local activists and scholars translated a number of alter-globalisation movement texts as they sought to develop a new language to articulate their desires for an alternative form of globalisation and their strategies for achieving it. The term _yojiteki seiji _(予示的政治) was coined as a translation word for ‘prefigurative politics’ and has been taken up by a number of activists and scholars. By examining the processes by which the English concept of ‘prefigurative politics’ became the Japanese _yojiteki seiji_, this paper documents the social networks and rhetorical devices via which new concepts develop in transnational space.