ABSTRACT

The consensus in public discourse about riots seems to be that if no clearly legible ‘message’ is being communicated by people in the streets, deploying appropriate symbolic language, there is no ‘political’ content, and, therefore, no ‘message’ at all. Yet, historically, riots are born out of political conditions and stage political situations. To refuse to recognise private property is political. To refuse to obey capitalist disciplines of exchange is political. To break the law is political: if nothing else, the limits of the law are determined by politicians. So it is not so much that riots are not political – more that they do not speak ‘politically’ – or at least, not in appropriate, authorised or acceptable protest vocabularies. This short chapter sketches the opportunities for recognising riot as political speech, reading the historical relationship between protest and riot and asking, how does the riot speak?