What is an Insurrection?

The notion of insurrection has been increasingly deployed as a way of describing recent uprisings around the world – from Tahrir Square to Occupy Wall Street, from the ‘movement of the squares’ in Madrid and Athens to Gezi Park in Istanbul. Saul Newman discusses a theoretical understanding of the insurrection as a central concept in radical politics in order to account for contemporary movements and forms of mobilisation that seek to withdraw from governing institutions and affirm autonomous practices and forms of life.