The Responsibility to Disrupt

Climate activists are jailed for blocking roads. Students are suspended for encampments. Antiracist demonstrators are publicly condemned as extremists. At a time marked by climate collapse, genocidal wars and widening inequality, those who interrupt business as usual are increasingly criminalized.

The Responsibility to Disrupt examines controversies surrounding political protest and considers what the backlash against disruption reveals about contemporary democracy. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s reflections on political questioning, this book engages classic defenders of order such as Machiavelli and Hobbes alongside contemporary thinkers including Angela Davis, Howard Zinn and Jacques Rancière.

Through political theory and real-world cases, the book explores nonviolent disruption as a shared democratic practice and invites readers to reflect on what a genuinely democratic response to protest might entail.