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Bodies On The Line: Physical Protest, Wendy Varney

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The usefulness of organised protest is often called into question in this electronic media-dominated age, when to bring bodies together around a demand or set of demands can seem somewhat archaic. So many of the occasions where we previously had to turn up personally have been superseded as we connect frequently but briefly, spontaneously but not necessarily simultaneously. Slogans have become eclipsed by SMS texts. So many of our messages are in cyberspace rather than on calico banners. Is there the need for physical protest? I will argue that there is, but that we need to understand how our protests …