Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Feminist Activism at the 15-M/Indignados Movement and Beyond

Sat, August 12, 2:30 to 3:30pm, Palais des congrès de Montréal, Floor: Level 5, 517B

Abstract

In May 2011 a new social movement emerged in Spain: the 15-M or Indignados movement. This paper analyzes the feminist activism within this movement contributing, finally, to a better knowledge both of this movement as a whole and of the contemporary feminist movement. In the first section, I will show how conflicts have been key in the development of actions and strategies by feminist activists in this movement, who have had, nevertheless, a great influence in the how —the form— as well as in the what —the proposals— of the 15-M/Indignados. In the second part and based on trajectories and experiences of becoming feminist, I will argue that the 15-M/Indignados movement might become the mixed organization for the constitution of a new feminist generation. Moreover, this feminist activism emerged inside the 15-M/Indignados movement is seen as a “neutral space” where new understandings among feminists could emerge and, finally, as a promise for the revitalization of the feminist movement in this country as a whole. The paper is based mainly in a qualitative research on feminisms in the 15-M/Indignados movement (in-depth interviews, observations and analysis of discourses produced by the movement). But the arguments developed in the second section are also based on the fieldwork of a larger research on the Spanish contemporary feminist movement and, specifically, three interviews of that fieldwork are used.

Author