Introduction: Three Registers of Destitution

Three Registers of DestitutionWhen we first proposed this special issue in late 2019, a cascade of uprisings was sweeping the globe, from France to Hong Kong, from Puerto Rico, Chile, and Ecuador to Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran.This list, far from exhaustive, would soon be dwarfed by the events of 2020 and 2021.In fact, according to some estimates, "roughly two-thirds of all countries have experienced at least one major anti-government protest since 2017" (Carnegie Institute 2022).Revolution does not, however, return the same way it left.And we do not take it up in complete innocence, as if we did not know why, for more than a century, it persistently failed.Despite their many tactical innovations, it is obvious that a strategic horizon capable of gathering the many fragmentary episodes of rage and dignity under a common truth is wanting.While this absence of a positive political horizon has led some to press for a return to traditional forms of organization or, alternately, for a new Madisonian moment by which to translate fugitive demotic experiments into durable public institutions, this special issue explores the possibility that a deeper paradigmatic break with the Western political tradition is not only necessary but is perhaps already under way.