Speaking of the Occupy movement

 Photograph: Monika Graff/Getty Images, May 1, 2012  nydailynews.com

[A]nyone who argues that demands must be capable of being satisfied assumes that there is someone or some existing institutional power to whom one could appeal to have one’s demands satisfied. Union negotiations backed by the threat of strikes usually do have a list of demands which, if satisfied, will avert the strike, and if not, will commence or prolong a strike. But when a company, corporation, or state is not considered a legitimate partner for negotiation, then it makes no sense to appeal to that authority for a negotiated settlement. In fact, to appeal to that authority to satisfy the demand would be one way of attributing legitimacy to that authority. So articulating demands that can be satisfied depends fundamentally on the attribution of legitimacy to those who have the power to satisfy the demands. And when one ceases to direct demands to those authorities, as happens in the general strike, then it is the illegitimacy of those authorities that is exposed. [...]

But if those existing institutions are complicit with the economic regime that depends upon, and furthers, the reproduction of inequality, then one cannot appeal to those institutions to bring about an end to the conditions of inequality. Such an appeal would defeat itself in the course of its articulation. Simply put, the appeal or demand that sought to be satisfied by the existing state, global monetary institutions, or corporations, national or transnational, would be giving more power to the very sources of inequality, and in that way aiding and abetting the reproduction of inequality itself. As a result, another set of strategies are required, and what we are now seeing in the Occupy Movement is precisely the development of a set of strategies that call attention to, and oppose, the reproduction of inequality.

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[I]t would not be possible to think democracy without an ideal of radical equality. So radical equality is a demand, but it is not directed to those institutions that reproduce inequality. It is directed to the people themselves whose historical task is the making of new institutions. The appeal is to ourselves, and it is this new “we” that is formed, episodically and globally, in every action and demonstration. Such actions are in no sense “apolitical.” They take aim at a politics that offers practical solutions at the expense of addressing structural inequality. And they remind us that every form of politics gains or loses its legitimacy depending on whether it accords equality to the people it is said to represent. Otherwise, it fails to represent, and so destroys its own legitimacy in the eyes of the people. In demonstrating, in acting, the people come to represent themselves, embodying and reanimating the principles of equality that have been decimated. Abandoned by existing institutions, they assemble themselves in the name of a social and political equality, giving voice, body, movement, and visibility to an idea of “the people” regularly divided and effaced by existing power.

The above text is an excerpt from the article So, what are the demands? And where do they go from here? by Judith Butler, published in tidal: occupy theory, occupy strategy, #2, March 2012, pp. 8-11; all issues are available in full here and here.

Photograph: Marcus Santos, May 1, 2012  nydailynews.com