By Isabel Estrada
The 2008 financial crisis prompted the most significant social protests in the Middle East, Europe and the United States since 1968. Despite the disparate history of these regions, as well as the divergent political outcomes of the protests, the imprint of the revolutionary spirit endures through new forms of social life. The social energy that brought millions of citizens to the streets did not necessarily translate into traditional political structures. Rather, its legacy manifests itself as new ways of understanding the sociopolitical sphere, that is, in new forms of social life. Consequently, these new forms of social life involve a new sensitivity, the voice of the individual and the participation of the collectivity, pacifist activism, consuetudinary political agency, digital communication, affect, horizontal organizational structures, and anti-neoliberal resistance.
In Spain, a large number of collectives have emerged out of the new forms of social life. They include, for example, the cooperative Numax, an independent bookstore and movie theater; the Plataforma para los Afectados por las Hipotecas (PAH, a collective that protects individual from evictions); the collective InsPiradas, an anti-psychiatry platform that fights against the stigma of mental health through self-affirmation; the Colectivo Los Hijos, which has produced some of the most creative independent short films in recent times; and Alces XXI, a collective of educators that promotes civic engagement and empowerment through instruction and peer mentoring. These are some of the more than 46 self-managed communities analyzed by Palmar Álvarez-Blanco in her Constelación de los Comunes.
This understanding of the new forms of social life also aligns with Amador Fernández Savater’s reflections — drawing from Gramsci, Castoriadis, and Badiou– as expressed in interviews, newspaper articles, public interventions, and his recently published book entitled La fuerza de los débiles. El 15M en el laberinto español, un ensayo sobre la eficacia política (2021).
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