From prefiguration to prefigurative political forms : the tradition and ethics in prefigurative politics

The discussions on prefigurative politics have often surfaced in the wake of historically remarkable collective actions. Among them, some of the most important were the First International, civil rights movement, the student movements of 1968 and the women's liberation movement. While the explicit use of this term had been confined rather to certain scholars and activists in these circles earlier, there was a growing interest in research on prefigurative politics in the 21st century. Starting initially from social movement studies following the implications of global justice, anti-austerity and Arab Spring movements, this interest has grown further, encompassing a range of fields within and beyond social sciences. Nevertheless, problems regarding its theorization and empirical applications have persisted. This article gives an analytical overview of the literature while conceptually building on a formal definition of prefiguration and a substantive understanding of prefigurative politics, associating them with the ethos of means/ends unity and allowing us to disentangle different modalities of prefigurative political forms.