Inappropriable Force: The Gezi Protests and the Politics of Refusal

In the aftermath of the global mass protests of the 2010s, democratic theorists have shown renewed interest in conceptualizing popular mobilization and "the people." A series of provocative works have theorized assembled crowds in the streets as sources of democratic authority, legitimacy, and sovereignty.These insightful accounts nevertheless often remain detached from the full range of the situated experiences of protesters. Inappropriable Force brings the concrete, on-the-ground practices of Turkey’s 2013 Gezi Uprising into the foreground of theoretical reflection,asking what people gathered in the streets shared, desired, or refused, and what their public experimentations with politics, language, and aesthetics made possible.Working from the empirical particularities of Gezi to political theory, the book theorizes protest as a political meaning-making enterprise that reconfigures everyday regimes of sense, speech, and engagement. Drawing on Gezi’s archives and engaging democratic a