Despite a strike wave in 2017 and 2018, the total number of strikes have declined precipitously since 1980. Many of my students have never seen a strike with their own eyes. At the same time, economic inequality has skyrocketed and led people to take to the streets. The Black Lives Matter movement has also contributed to a new street culture of protest. More than anywhere else, Portland, Oregon, has seen sustained, multifaceted protests in which anarchist ideology has led to riots and property damage.
In the expanded edition of his 2016 book, Joshua Clover provides a much-needed theoretical framework for the recent history of street protest and riots. After providing relatively brief and useful overviews of the history of the riot and the strike, he gets to his real purpose of theorizing the present. Noting the decline of unions and the industrial economy as the key turning point in the...
