Refusalist International - A Theory of the New Protest Cycle

The many mass protests that have taken place since 2011 have been characterised by an unmistakable need to challenge, overthrow and destroy the prevailing political representations without proposing new ones. The protests are not concerned with replacing the current government or leader with others, and thus getting a better version of what we already have. Instead, they refuse all leaders, including the most critical opposition leaders: these protests are about dismantling the need for leaders. More and more people are coming to the view that it is not possible to manage the many crises within the framework of the political institutions we have today. The new protests are political acts that are neither class struggle nor the establishment of an opposition to those in power. Rasmussen argues that we should understand these protests as the emergence of a new kind of revolutionary action that is as much an anthropological as a political transformation: it is an attempt to break free from all the traditional notions of how the social context that we call society and the nation-state is organised.

List of contents

Introduction            
The Globalization of Protest
The New Movement
Refusal
Aphasia
Anti-Politics
The Workers' Movement
The Socialist Horizon and Beyond
Dissolution
Refusal of the Refusal

About the author

Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen is Professor in Political Aesthetics in the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen.

Product details

• Authors: Mikkel Bolt (University of Copenhagen Rasmussen, Rasmussen Mikkel Bolt
• Publisher: Wiley, John and Sons Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 18.09.2025
• EAN: 9781509568277
• ISBN: 978-1-5095-6827-7
• No. of pages: 127
• Series: Theory Redux
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Ideologies / Radicalism, Politics & government, social and political philosophy, Political ideologies and movements