UPRISINGS”, an illustrated history of popular rebellion.
2019 has been a year of uprisings all around the world: from Santiago to Hong Kong. The concerns of the protesters are everywhere similar: justice, the corrupt authority, the return to some sort of principle of collective good. Otherwise they seem so diverse intellectuals and political commentators often seem baffled to find any common thread, ranging from demands for direct democracy (France), the rejection of the ethnic or sectarian identities (Iraq and Lebanon); or the fate of the planet itself.
“Uprisings” provides one way to understand all this by examining to full range of similar rebellions in the past, from slave revolts in ancient Egypt to the fall of the Berlin Wall or the women’s revolution in Rojava. , “Uprisings” will be working on the borders between historical analysis (non-fiction, twitter encyclopedia) and the visibility of contemporary art.
Where existing narratives of radical social change debate the virtues and vices of individual heroes (Jesus, Mandela, Rosa Parks, Gandhi), “Uprisings” follows the tradition of Howard Zinn, viewing major events as the product of a confluence of efforts by multiple actors, usually, from radically different backgrounds. Marginalized and anonymous groups, children, women, indigenous peoples, and oppressed classes, are its heroes, which re-examines history not just from the perspective of, but as to a large degree, written by, those normally written out.
Table of Contents
1. Egyptian Pyramid Strike: the first known industrial action
2. Defection of the Plebs in Rome
3. Chinese Peasant Revolts: the world’s most rebellious population
4. Pirates and Mutineers and Bandits
5. Weapons of the Weak: the role of tiny acts of resistance in history
6. The English Peasant Revolt of 1381 and Swiss revolt of 1653
7. The Radical Hussites, and the strange story of radical Bohemia
8. Captain Swing and the Story of the Luddites
9. 1848, the first year of world revolution
10. Tolstoy, the Narodniki, and origins of the revolutionary tradition in Russia
11. Paris Commune and the origins of communal luxury
12. “Revolution on the Knees”: tragicomic obedience as a form of protest in 19th century Russia
13. the Wobblies and radical syndicalism
14. Mother Jones and the march of child mine labourers, 1903
15. How Radical Suffragettes set fire to postboxes throughout London
16. the Russian women who sparked the 1917 Revolution
17. Satyagraha: The Quit India Movement and the Salt March
18. The American Civil Rights Movement: “Strong People Don’t Need Strong Leaders”
19. Novocherkask: Soviet Workers Uprising in 1962
20. The Long Friday in Iceland: the world’s most successful sit-down strike
21. May ’68: global uprising
22. The Soweto Uprising and the rise of the ANC (1976)
23. Greenpeace and the Rainbow Warrior, direct action at sea
24. ACT UP: throwing the ashes of their loved ones on the White House Lawn
25. Solidarnost, Poland: a labor movement that moved from anarchism to conservatism
26. Zapatista uprising, and the Other Campaign
27. The Global Justice Movement and the Quebec City Catapult
28. The Yes Men: the Bhopal Hoax
29. The People’s Intelligence Agency: Open Source and Surveillance Capital
30. Monstration: Russian youth reappropriate public space
31. Pink Chaddi Campaign: Indian women besiege their mayor with their underwear (2009)
32. Book Bloc: the 2010 Student Movement in London
33. The Arab Spring
34. Occupy Everything, the uprisings of 2011
35. Black Lives Matter —-
36. Women’s Revolution in Rojava
37. The Yellow Vests: Who Pays to Save the Planet?
38. Five Hundred Roses and other Ecological Movements in Eastern Europe
39. Black Friday in Poland: We Are the Granddaughters of the Witches You Didn’t Burn
40. Extinction Rebellion conquers London
41. Fridays for Future: children demand adults act like grown-ups
42. Cosmic Rebels Against Death: Bogdanov, Fedorov and Russian Cosmism
and many more to come!