"The piece generated a fair amount of backlash-hundreds of comments on the site prior to archiving and a vehement exchange in e-flux conversations with an activist and artist-scholar. I based the controversial piece on my experience of serving as a legal observer for the 2016 Republican National Convention in my hometown, Cleveland, Ohio. What I observed then as a neutral party focused only on protecting free speech was that both protests and counter-protests were structured by profound forms of narcissism."
"One of the practices riding on relational sub-structure is protest as witnessing out facing, and for, others on something that truly should matter to the community ("pro-testari"). The traditional assumption is that protest calls others, including the government's agents, to be accountable through the substructure of common humanity and that protest solidifies both conviction and collective agency for those witnessing."
After the 2016 election, protests and counter-protests exhibited deep narcissistic structure that shaped behavior. Narcissism permeates society across popular culture, academia, technologies, and practices, producing a failure of basic relational practices. Protest traditionally functions as pro-testari—witnessing and calling others to accountability through a substructure of common humanity. Narcissistic protest prioritizes self-display and performance over genuine witnessing, undermining collective conviction and agency. The resulting erosion of relational infrastructure degrades accountability and civic responsibility, affecting political culture domestically and internationally. Revising protest aesthetics and practices can help restore relational substructures and revive meaningful civic engagement and accountability.
Read at Apaonline
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