https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/cambridge/oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/332836
type: CreativeWork
name: Call it a Revolution: Paradox, Politics and Security in the Urban Frontier An intergenerational narrative on the young female comrade’s resistance, political action and civil death in South Africa and Turkey
description: Fundamentally, this thesis is about multiple crises of state, and the revolutionary efforts to transcend them and face the paradox of politics. That is, the paradox of creating new political beginnings out of and upon a ‘politics out of history’ (Brown, 2001). To address these themes, I focus on securitisation, a technology and biopolitics of the state aimed at predicting and controlling its population, as a driving theme to explore the underlying logic of the modern nation-state, as it emerges out of empire. Here, I examine and explore the intersection of the state’s desire to securitise and maintain liberal freedoms, as a promise of the modern nation-state, and the radical drive of its citizens to build a space for the realm of politics and the realisation of more radical freedoms (Arendt, 2013). Taking this intersection as a starting point, I delve into fundamental contradictions of the modern nation-state, by focusing on what I aim to depict as its ‘undesirable’ citizen. That is, the gendered, racialised and classed political being. Further, I focus on young people to emphasise the contradictions between natal political aspirations (ibid) and the state’s virtue politics (Honig, 2016) that seek to produce order and predictability. Therefore, this study, takes as its core emprirical question: how does securitisation shape the political expression of young female comrades across time and space? This project, takes an intergenerational and transnational frame as its starting point to first, further explore ‘politics out of history’ (Brown, 2001) and political paradox, and second, to capture the ‘connected sociologies’ (Bhambra, 2016) that bridge together divergent yet uncannily familiar experiences of empire, nation-building, and securitisation. To build this story, I have chosen two ‘global cities - Cape Town and Istanbul - as a representation of the ‘urban frontier’ space (Sassen, 2000; 2013), with different histories of empire and state-making, yet shared legacie…
abstract: Fundamentally, this thesis is about multiple crises of state, and the revolutionary efforts to transcend them and face the paradox of politics. That is, the paradox of creating new political beginnings out of and upon a ‘politics out of history’ (Brown, 2001). To address these themes, I focus on securitisation, a technology and biopolitics of the state aimed at predicting and controlling its population, as a driving theme to explore the underlying logic of the modern nation-state, as it emerges out of empire. Here, I examine and explore the intersection of the state’s desire to securitise and maintain liberal freedoms, as a promise of the modern nation-state, and the radical drive of its citizens to build a space for the realm of politics and the realisation of more radical freedoms (Arendt, 2013). Taking this intersection as a starting point, I delve into fundamental contradictions of the modern nation-state, by focusing on what I aim to depict as its ‘undesirable’ citizen. That is, the gendered, racialised and classed political being. Further, I focus on young people to emphasise the contradictions between natal political aspirations (ibid) and the state’s virtue politics (Honig, 2016) that seek to produce order and predictability. Therefore, this study, takes as its core emprirical question: how does securitisation shape the political expression of young female comrades across time and space? This project, takes an intergenerational and transnational frame as its starting point to first, further explore ‘politics out of history’ (Brown, 2001) and political paradox, and second, to capture the ‘connected sociologies’ (Bhambra, 2016) that bridge together divergent yet uncannily familiar experiences of empire, nation-building, and securitisation. To build this story, I have chosen two ‘global cities - Cape Town and Istanbul - as a representation of the ‘urban frontier’ space (Sassen, 2000; 2013), with different histories of empire and state-making, yet shared legacie…
author: Bose, Sagarika
language: eng
keywords: Revolution, Security, Surveillance, Youth Studies, Ethnography, Political Sociology, Gender and Activism
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2021-09-30
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:04Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.80270