Dissertation Defense: Eleanor Finley

Supervisor: Dr. Jaqueline Urla

ABSTRACT
How do we account for the significant differences in the conception and practice of prefigurative politics and radical democracy in grassroots social movements? A decade ago, a period of intense, global grassroots mobilization called the Movements of the Squares brought prefigurative politics (the linkage of present means and future ends) to the center of public and scholarly attention, foregrounding the practice of directly
democratic deliberation in characteristic forms such as encampment “general assemblies.” Today, a new generation of social activists is deploying prefigurative practices and imaginaries, such as the municipalist movement of Barcelona and democratic confederalism in the Rojava Revolution of North and East Syria. This
diversification raises an opportunity to explore what anthropologist Arturo Escobar calls “pluriversal prefiguration,” the embodiment of post-capitalism in ways that engage local knowledge, foster place-based identities, and speak to a multiplicity of democratic ideals. In this article, I argue that Kurdish liberation activism challenges the primacy of deliberation and decision-making in our understanding of prefigurative politics by centering, rather, horizontal interpersonal relationships, popular consciousness-raising, and political community. To do so, I mobilize ethnographic fieldwork among Kurdish diasporic activists and their transnational allies in Germany and the UK between 2016 and 2020, focusing on the emic notions of hevalti (friendship), tekmil (self-criticism), and perxwede (education).

Keywords: prefigurative politics, social movements, democratic confederalism, Kurdish
Freedom Movement, activist research.