It is both curious and subversive that the Occupy Wall Street movement chose “occupy” as its primary term. “Wall Street” is a fairly obvious choice as it represents, it is a synecdoche for, that which the movement opposes. Wall Street is a symbolic space where times and ideologies intersect. “Occupy” primarily signifies
a movement against an excessively corrupted multinational capitalist economy, to attempt to occupy an oppressive system that is necessarily and inherently an occupying system itself, an infiltrating socio-economic system that can be characterized as a systemic and systematic occupier, is in many ways problematic. “Occupy”: from the Latin occupare meaning “take over, seize, possess” (in some instances “trade”); also from capere meaning “to grasp, seize;” in Greek rendered katalambano meaning “to seize, win, attain, make one’s own, seize with hostile intent, overtake.” “Occupy” can also mean to take or fill space or time, to engage energy or attention, to be a resident or tenant of, dwell in, or to take possession and control of by military invasion (in typical phallocentric fashion, occupy was also a euphemism for sexual intercourse during the 18th and 19th centuries). “Occupation” (from occupationem, “taking possession, business, employment”) can mean regular work or profession, a job or principal activity, control of a country by a foreign military power, occupier of a particular property, and possession, settlement, or use of land or property. Thus, it is an odd choice for a movement so adamantly opposed to things being seized, taken over, or (re)possessed. This term “occupy” is problematic, but it is also highly subversive. “Occupy,” or “occupation,” can certainly be used in a subversive sense as when protestors, or “subversives,” participate in the organization and implementation of engaging one’s energy or attention in order to fill space and time (a question of agency), but it also carries significant militaristic and geographical themes such as controlling, even colonizing, by invasion or military force/power (a question of motive). It also carries capitalistic themes such as property, to take or to (re)possess or to take over, to seize, and even to monopolize. Occupy is problematic, then, because it signifies the very things it is attempting to protest, to resist or object to. On the other hand, the choice of this term is highly subversive in an ironic, even transgressive, way that entirely undermines the meaning of the term itself. That is, the use of “occupy” in Occupy Wall Street indicates an occupation of “occupation” itself – an occupation of the otherness that remains even after the space is seized or possessed as a homogenizing, hegemonic force.
a movement against an excessively corrupted multinational capitalist economy, to attempt to occupy an oppressive system that is necessarily and inherently an occupying system itself, an infiltrating socio-economic system that can be characterized as a systemic and systematic occupier, is in many ways problematic. “Occupy”: from the Latin occupare meaning “take over, seize, possess” (in some instances “trade”); also from capere meaning “to grasp, seize;” in Greek rendered katalambano meaning “to seize, win, attain, make one’s own, seize with hostile intent, overtake.” “Occupy” can also mean to take or fill space or time, to engage energy or attention, to be a resident or tenant of, dwell in, or to take possession and control of by military invasion (in typical phallocentric fashion, occupy was also a euphemism for sexual intercourse during the 18th and 19th centuries). “Occupation” (from occupationem, “taking possession, business, employment”) can mean regular work or profession, a job or principal activity, control of a country by a foreign military power, occupier of a particular property, and possession, settlement, or use of land or property. Thus, it is an odd choice for a movement so adamantly opposed to things being seized, taken over, or (re)possessed. This term “occupy” is problematic, but it is also highly subversive. “Occupy,” or “occupation,” can certainly be used in a subversive sense as when protestors, or “subversives,” participate in the organization and implementation of engaging one’s energy or attention in order to fill space and time (a question of agency), but it also carries significant militaristic and geographical themes such as controlling, even colonizing, by invasion or military force/power (a question of motive). It also carries capitalistic themes such as property, to take or to (re)possess or to take over, to seize, and even to monopolize. Occupy is problematic, then, because it signifies the very things it is attempting to protest, to resist or object to. On the other hand, the choice of this term is highly subversive in an ironic, even transgressive, way that entirely undermines the meaning of the term itself. That is, the use of “occupy” in Occupy Wall Street indicates an occupation of “occupation” itself – an occupation of the otherness that remains even after the space is seized or possessed as a homogenizing, hegemonic force.
The (re)use, or even (re)deployment, of “occupy” is an argumentative form or style that is a re-defining and re-formulating of the term “occupy” through its own disruption and destabilization of that which stands at the center of a system that is possessed by exorbitant corruption, seized by greed, and taken over by that driving engine of free market capitalism and consumer society, i.e., envy. In a sense, one can approach this spatio-linguistic signification or re-presentation of “occupy” as Michel de Certeau writes of space and place: “It is striking…that the places people live in are like the presences of diverse absences. What can be seen designates what is no longer there” (108). The places, or geographies, people occupy or dwell in or possess or settle as property always point to that which was at one time un-occupied or pre-occupied. These spaces are “haunted by many different spirits hidden there in silence” and signify what is now absent, what is now invisible through the visible; what is now dis-placed or fragmented.
Wall Street, that paradoxical Street, signifies both freedom and oppression simultaneously. It signifies the bull, the bull market, a certain golden calf to some, and it indicates its religious sacrificial roots found in “money’s” namesake, Juno Moneta (Jupiter’s wife and sister), who was offered a bull sacrifice on the alter in her Temple, which was also the first place where Roman coins were minted (Taylor, 149-50). It is this paradoxical Street that signifies not only what is physically no longer “in place” but also what is now absent on a socio-economic level. It is 1) a presence pointing toward an absence of what came before our now sanctified and dogmatic postindustrial capitalist beliefs, e.g., the haunting ghost of democratic ideals, and 2) Wall Street is also a visibility pointing towards that invisible hand – the spirit(s) of capitalism – that allegedly drives the capitalism it seeks to re-present and re-peat. In like manner, the Occupy movement also signifies what is absent. By seizing Wall Street, by possessing it “as if” by military force, the movement re-presents a fragmentation and dis-placement of hegemonic space, and it reveals what is no longer there – a certain democratic freedom of thought and choice – as well as those absent faces, those “other” specters, who have abandoned all hope under the crushing force of an oppressive economic system. To be sure, Wall Street itself points towards these same faces, these same citizens who have been dis-possessed and dis-placed, but it is the Occupy movement that has the potential to redeem this absent democratic citizenry, a democratic citizenry that is almost a fiction now, through its continuing presence of occupation.
The protestors are both seizing and possessing, and they are being seized and possessed by those sacred ghosts, those life-giving spirits, of a redemptive democracy that haunt us in the shadows of the colossus we call unfettered free market capitalism. The protestors are attempting to make present those diverse absences of democratic expression and those “spirits hidden there in silence” who seek to reveal a now fragile, now vibrant democratic citizenry. In short, they offer a future-oriented democracy, a redemption of hope, a hope for redemption. Thus, although occupation does carry implied themes of violence, this is a redemptive occupation in both senses of the term (and redemption also carries implied themes of sacrificial violence). The protesters are 1) occupied and employed, even seized or possessed, by the business of redemption – “we are in the occupation of redemption” – and 2) they are engaging in a type of spatial/geographical occupation that is redemptive – “we are occupying this space in order to be redemptive.” It is precisely within this occupied space, this space of occupation, that a hyperbolic ethic of hospitality and responsibility might be gainfully employed. Of course, redemption is also a form and economy of debt as well.
