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What is political action? · Dec 18, 14:21

David Graeber, Lost People, p. 130.

The nice thing about anomalous cases is that they force one to rethink one’s definitions. It seems to me in this context at least, instead of starting from the question “What is politics?—since that immediately evokes the idea of a political sphere—it would be more useful to ask “What is political action? What is it about an act that enables one to say it is political?”

The most obvious response would be tht actions are political in so far as they are intended to influence the actions of others (or, perhaps, just in so far as they do, because something can be unintentionally political). The problem with this is that it would mean that, with the possible exception of certain purely technical actions, all actions have some political component. This may not be a bad way of looking at things—but even when one says “Everything is political,” one normally means something more. One implies that one’s actions have a broader significance, that they relate to more general issues. So let me suggest a refinement. As a minimal definition, political action is action meant to influence others who arenot physically present when the action is being done. This is not to sa it can’t be intended to influence people who are physically present; it is to say its effects are not limited to that. It is action that is meant to be recounted, narrated, or in some other way represented to other people afterward; or anyway, it is political in so far as it is.