Master Thesis Defense: İlkim Karakuş
“BRUTES” AND “PACIFISTS” MEET POLITICS OF THE ACT: VIOLENCE, NONVIOLENCE AND PREFIGURATION
İlkim Karakuş
Cultural Studies, M.Sc. Thesis, 2015
Thesis Jury
Faik Kurtulmuş (Thesis Supervisor), Ayşe Parla, Banu Bargu
Date &Time: June,28th , 2015 – 14:00
Place: Karaköy Minerva Han
Abstract
In an attempt to problematize the violence/nonviolence binary and the dogmatic forms
they take in the context of resistance, this thesis starts by exploring the literature on
nonviolence, and violence in revolutionary rhetoric. After a critical review of the
literature, it turns to current debates on violence in confrontational militant praxis,
which refers to nonlethal use of violence in the context of protest, such as property
destruction and clashes with the police. This thesis argues that the confrontational
militancy produces a “hardcore habitus” and sacrificial subjectivities fed by valorized
notions of suffering. Identifying the dependence on the opponent – mostly, the state-
and its violence within confrontational politics as the necessary conditions for the
emergence of “hardcore habitus”, sacrificial subjectivities, and dogmatic forms of
associations disabling critical commitments, this study then introduces prefiguration
as an alternative approach. It argues that prefigurative politics secures the room for
criticism, and precludes the ontological dependence on the opponent due its direct-
action-orientation and emphasis on micropolitics. Finally, drawing on the different
configurations of success, temporality and the denial of an instrumental reasoning in
prefiguration, this thesis discusses militancy within the prefigurative frame.