Invisible Politics: Lessons from the Iraqi Tishreen on Unaffiliated Activist Trajectories and Long Revolutions in Divided Societies

Non-ethnic mobilization in divided societies is often read through a lens of exceptionalism shaped by the adoption of narrowly outcome-oriented paradigms. Processual approaches have problematized such interpretative distortions by introducing longitudinal explorations of movement trajectories, but often apply rigid distinctions between explicitly political forms of mobilization and those which, occurring outside recognizable political organizations, are not perceived to contribute to change in collective political consciousness. In this article, I explore the relevance of Abdelrahman’s “long revolution” model to the analysis of uprisings in divided societies through the case of the Iraqi Tishreen revolution, with a longitudinal and biographical focus on participation and the formation of political consciousness outside traditional political organizations. I argue that civic uprisings in divided societies can be best understood through a lens of overlapping temporalities, acknowledging the subterranean, yet essential contribution of the everyday “invisible politics” of participation and contestation to the creation of a diffuse political consciousness among unaffiliated citizens.