Abstract

In the wake of the Arab Spring, the phenomenon of the so-called «political squares» spread around the world: Occupy Wall Street in New York, Gezi Park in Istanbul and other analogous yet geopolitically diverse forms of political experiences display bodies that gather in a public space of appearance exposing their vulnerability and they right to persist. By engaging with Judith Butler analysis of this phenomenon in terms of assembly of bodies, the essay revisits the Arendtian concept of plurality and reframes it as a distinct collective subject whose spatial, temporal and interactive expression contrasts with the phenomenology of the mass.