Disruptive Elders: Enacting Heterotopias of the Riverbank

Community activism is a vibrant component of creatively and collaboratively responding to the inequitable impacts of neoliberalism. Using qualitative fieldwork data, this chapter argues that some of the most dynamic examples of heterotopian initiatives develop from unexpected sources – elderly retirees. They deploy a variety of direct action techniques including entryism in local governance roles, social media campaigning and public art performances. Defying simple categorisation and refusing to be rendered socially invisible, within the new realities of living within a “politics of austerity” era, these elders help us to consider possible other sustainable futures that the heterotopian imaginary offers.