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The Capitol Connection
The College of Public Affairs and Education and the Center for State Policy and Leadership, University of Illinois Springfield

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  • Power in Other Places: On Uprisings, Black Lives Matter, and Politics

    People over Property Protest

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rgilm3@uis.edu cschm5@uis.eduAug 24, 2020 11:48 am

An excellent review Richard.  Could you tell us what exactly you mean by revolt and if it differs from protest, riot, rebellion and revolution?  Is it necessarily violent or are the violent aspects some other factor operarting in the space of revolt?

Thanks, Chuck Schmitt

 

Hi Chuck! Great questions, and the answers may be useful to others as well. I understand revolt to mean an uprising or upheaval in civil society that surpasses what we think of as conventional protest demonstration, but that is not necessarily revolutionary. So, revolt is an uprising in between protest and revolution. Some part of the revolt may want to be revolutionary, but as a whole it is not. Revolt exceeds the normal space and time of a protest demonstration, meaning that it creates a management problem for cities and police who cannot easily control it or predict its end. Yet revolt is not clearly attached to a cohesive set of revolutionary goals, for it usually expresses a complex range of disaffections without clarity on what is to be done. In this way, revolt is closer to rebellion and riot, and indeed, it often contains elements of both. On the question of violence, much depends upon one’s definition of violence. But revolt certainly cannot be defined as categorically pacifist since part of its historic and disruptive power comes from not knowing what it will do. All of these things are more fully defined and discussed in my work... Specters of Revolt would be a good place to start!

Reply to rgilm3@uis.edu at 11:48 am
cschm5@uis.edu Aug 23, 2020 11:01 am

An excellent review Richard.  Could you tell us what exactly you mean by revolt and if it differs from protest, riot, rebellion and revolution?  Is it necessarily violent or are the violent aspects some other factor operarting in the space of revolt?

Thanks, Chuck Schmitt

 

Reply to cschm5@uis.edu at 11:01 am