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Events of Dissent, Events of the Self

The Liminality of Protest Images

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Liminality and Critical Event Studies
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Abstract

Dissent and protest events are strategies often actualized in public spaces, raising societal issues by creating awareness, by challenging power, and by establishing a collective identity. Who and what is the individual amid these actions and events? This chapter interrogates the emergence of online images, uploaded by individuals to investigate how they convey a liminal confluence of, digital narcissism, memory work, civic or “guerilla” journalism, and surveillance. How images represent liminal space, transforming individual complying citizens to dissident and political actors and the liminality of spectator’s understanding of the issues being raised, is analyzed. The liminality of actors in dissent and protest and the viewers of images means actors and spectators become unintended agents of repression, which is an exemplar of the prevalence of governmentality.

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Correspondence to Rasul A. Mowatt .

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Mowatt, R.A. (2020). Events of Dissent, Events of the Self. In: Lamond, I., Moss, J. (eds) Liminality and Critical Event Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40256-3_12

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