Deliberation, Interrupted

This paper makes a normative and practical case for the role of interruption in deliberative politics. Drawing on cases of protest movements in Puerto Rico and the Philippines in the aftermath of record-breaking hurricanes, I describe the ways in which sorrowful protests interrupt emerging narratives of the disaster that shape the course of public deliberation. I argue that interruptive protests have the power to redistribute currencies necessary for deliberation: (1) voice and visibility; (2) attention; and (3) narrative agency. In contexts where vulnerable communities have no assured voice and assumed audience, interruption offers a political moment to renegotiate the terms of what it means to engage in the public sphere.