The Politics of “No!”

The chapter follows grassroots activists and the movements that they cultivated from 2012 to 2013. The politics of “No!” felt through these movements, affirm worlds to come through the negation of the world as it is. The author shows how the politics of “No!” transformed larger political feelings in the country, especially through the 2013 post-presidential elections that wavered and then eventually fractured—splits brought on by ambiguous feelings about replacing one political Father, a Daddy, with another. The politics of “No!”—a response to the illegitimate Father’s No—imaginatively make future worlds in a liminal present, opening up new horizons. Most importantly in Armenia, the politics of “No!” have been making way for a future without a political Daddy and are thus a radical alternative to a millennia-long surviving nation with a strong Father to lead it.