Marching Right Through the Affective Economy of the Public Sphere

Thinking through the affective interconnection between bodies and spaces, this chapter analyses Istiklal Street as an ethnographic ‘site’ exposing the historicity of social struggles for rights. It analyses the ‘right to be in the street,’ that is, in a street that hosts demonstrations and protests every day, echoing demands for recognition and belonging, as well as differently projected affects, desires and hopes. It examines the importance of sustaining political alliances at the heart of an urban space encompassing the tension created between a secular polity and Islamic piety, between neoliberal economic projects and multicultural politics of tolerance, and between severe policing and other forms of violence. Focusing on the 2009 Pride March, it explains that this street also reflects the common struggle of many other activists to secure a political ‘space’ where their demands against violence, suffering, oppression and discrimination, as well as their different desires, will not be silenced.