Ruiz, Pollyanna
(2013)
Revealing power: masked protest and the blank figure.
Cultural Politics.
ISSN 1743-2197
(Submitted)
Abstract
This article examines the practical and theoretical implications raised by protesters’ use of masks to conceal themselves from the eyes of the state. It argues that the refusal to seen and categorised by the state is empowering in that it exposes, and then unsettles the power dynamics that structure public space. These issues are explored through an analysis of the masks worn by the Zapatistas, the black bloc, carnivalesque protesters, anti-war protesters and the occupy movement. Habermas maintains that the public sphere should be an inclusive and universally accessible discursive arena. Moreover he suggests that political debate within these spaces should be characterised by reason, sincerity and transparency. The notion of transparency is central to this theoretical framework and hinges on a series of conceptual binaries that limit and confine more complex understandings of the contemporary public sphere in general and the use of masks in particular. Consequently mainstream images and narratives of protest invariably frame the wearing of masks in public spaces as a frivolous and/or duplicitous barrier to communication. This analysis pulls out some of the many different ways in which masks create transformative in-between space which break down the boundaries of the public sphere as it is traditionally conceived. It argues that the blank space created by masks signifies the presence of a deliberately unspecified absence and facilitates the possibility of thinking differently. It concludes by arguing that this strategic form of presence reveals the usually invisible boundaries of the public sphere and in doing so unsettles the dynamics of power which structure articulations of dissent.
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