"In the Street expands our understanding of democracy, putting texts of political theory into an innovative conversation with the lived experience of citizens working to articulate opposition, express civic desires, and claim and occupy public space. By exploring how various subjects reconceptualize state power through mass action and by placing political friendship at the center of her analysis, Çidam reminds us that there is nothing futile about the shared struggle for a better world." -- Cristina Beltrán, New York University

"Çiğdem Çidam has written a brilliant analysis of democratic politics as spontaneous popular action, a hugely important--but far too rarely theorized--feature of protest politics. By means of insightful reinterpretations of a range of major political thinkers, along with careful attention to recent protest movements, Çidam's extraordinary study should be required reading for political theorists and philosophers, as well as scholars of protest politics and social movements." -- William E. Scheuerman, Indiana University

"We've heard it before from critics of popular uprisings: citizens must give up the vibrant spontaneity of street protests and adopt more durable forms of organization if they are to produce lasting 'results.' Using historical and contemporary examples, Çiğdem Çidam expertly illuminates how this is a false choice. In the Street is an inspired guide to how political actors create bonds of commonality and equality among their ranks. Examining the art, rhetoric, and practices of protest, Çidam teaches readers how movements are reshaping our understanding of democracy today." -- Ali Aslam, Mount Holyoke College

"Çiğdem Çidam's dazzling book shows how democratic theory's focus on the eruptive character of mass protests obscures the lived practices of activists that made those eruptions possible, in all of their messiness and conflict, and the lessons they can offer about the meaning of radical democracy today. Conceptually innovative and beautifully written, In the Street is a timely provocation to rethink the ways we talk about the praxis of protest." -- Alexander Livingston, Cornell University