Lietuvos etnologija / Lithuanian ethnology

This article argues that Bulgaria’s 2013–2014 protests were rooted in an imagined ‘normal’ life that protesters turned into political action, what I call the politics of praxis. The politics of praxis refers to the practice of aspirational everyday life as a form of political engagement. Protesters craft the type of world they deem ‘normal’ by performing and practising what they imagine an EU-era Bulgarian society should be. Everyday ‘normalcy’ is both (1) to what protesters aspire, and (2) the conditions of everyday protest life. It is only within the unordinary space of protest that utopian visions of EU-era ‘normal’ life can be realised.