The most enduring lesson of Occupy Wall Street is the value of dynamically assembling different tendencies into a multitudinous force. Anarchist leadership was central to launching the movement but contributions from socialists and social democrats were integral to its overall success. Moreover the limitations of anarchist-inspired movement features like horizontalism and refusing demands began to reveal themselves as the encampments advanced, further evidencing the value of dynamic assembly (versus a case for anarchist or socialist universality).

This article explores the growing use of mind/body practices like meditation and yoga in Left social movements. The analysis is rooted in interviews with activists participating in the transformative movement-building current: the growing number of organizations integrating subjective and social transformation practices. William Connolly’s work on micropolitics is put into conversation with the transformative movement-building current. The epistemological assumption undergirding this article is that textual political theory, and the knowledge being produced by activists, can benefit from dynamic exchange. My argument is that Connolly’s post-Nietzschean political theory offers a powerful justification for the political importance of mind/body practices, one that adds to activist justifications. I also argue that transformative movement-building contributes to recent theoretical debates by concretely demonstrating the integral importance of micropolitics for successful macromovements.

poema