Introduction

The introduction highlights four major interventions of the book. First, rather than relying on social science definitions of revolution as transformed states and overthrown leaders, it uses the term to broadly capture affective, intimate, embodied, institutional, and spatial registers of upheaval and transgression. Second, it argues for disrupting taken-for-granted understandings of place and space and focuses on the nexus between bodies and spatiality as activists engaged in world challenging and world making. Third, it highlights the dilemmas that continue to be posed by ideological conflict, sexual difference, and class inequality, which are embodied, inscribed in a variety of spaces, and not easily overcome by mass protest. Fourth, it challenges the public/private dichotomization of metaphorical and physical spaces, bodies, and social relations. The introduction also discusses the implications of “chaos” in revolutionary and counterrevolutionary discourse and practices.