Presumptive Space and the Tibetan Struggle for Visibility in Lhasa

Material public space is the place where authoritarian assurances that citizens are content may be challenged), 1 a point amply demonstrated as waves of public protest stood against official narratives during the Arab Spring. In addition to rendering perceptible those who are affected by an issues, material public space has the important capacity to affirm the humanity they share with their adversaries. It also overcomes the screen of literacy that limits the Habermasian public sphere. In the dialectic between presumptive and public space, consider Tibet, a colonial project of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since 1950. Deprived of the instruments of democracy, indigenous Tibetans have resourcefully developed ways to display publicly what presumptive space denies. Given the PRC’s mantra of harmony and stability, the stakes in this encounter are high. In this essay I examine three Lhasa ethnosites that differ in the degree to which the regime has been able to enforce its presumptive power. I also consider a recent, radical strategy for increasing that power and a dramatic mode of Tibetan resistance.