“My body is unremarkable, not at all singular,” the poet Juliana Spahr has sung, “as I walk up to join these other bodies, and it remains unremarkable, not at all singular …” These lines come from “Brent Crude,” a poem reflecting on Spahr’s participation in Occupy Oakland. I’ve likewise felt my body’s urge to be nonindividuated in the tremor of protest: this happened first, for me, during the UK’s 2010 student protests against spending cuts and fee hikes in higher education.

We weren’t the only ones yearning to be nonsingular. Throughout the 2010s, assemblies formed everywhere from Tahrir Square to Hong Kong, intent on formulating new social worlds. Yet these gatherings – which, following Spahr’s poetic example, I read as vulnerable, prefigurative evocations of communality – were answered by tear gas, water cannons, surveillance, and other tools of state violence. The severity of these responses affirms the threat that wildcat expressions of collectivity pose to the global liberal order. “We are an awkward formation,” wrote Spahr. “Ununited but together.”

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– The full text appears in Spike #62 . You can buy it in our online shop –