In Search of a Political Theory of Assembly

_{Srinivasan, Sharath, ‘In Search of a Political Theory of Assembly’, in Tabatha Abu El-Haj, and others (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Peaceful Assembly (online edn, Oxford Academic, 23 Jan. 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197674871.013.1}

Professor Srinivasan’s recently published chapter, in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Peaceful Assembly that he co-edits, re-centres the place of assembly in political theory. Critiquing the marginalisation of assembly in strands of realist and liberal thought, Srinivasan recovers a global historical experience of popular assembly that lies behind contemporary assembly-as-protest, and with this develops an argument that foregrounds how assembly’s extraordinary qualities are both constitutive of the boundary of the political ordinary and its biggest threat.