New subjectivities: building “compañerismo” in the movement and at home

• In Event: Invited Session - Cuerpo, violencia y cultura: actualización de las subjetividades políticas en América Latina I

Abstract

This paper explores the changes in the subjectivities of women in non-hierarchical social movements in Argentina. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, an important number of autonomous movements defied neoliberalism by collectively organizing to defend their families and lifestyles from the local and global forces that threatened them. Organized in what I have defined as the field of politics by other means, they enacted a conscious response to failed governmental programs and discourse designed to create docile, mobile subjects (neoliberal governmentality). The democratic structures they created deeply contrasted with the dispossessing nature of the global power they confronted. This new political culture and methodology fostered “other means” of making politics, including not only direct actions but also a concern for internal gender democracy. Through “compañerismo” practices, women challenged gender inequities contributing to democratize both their movements and their family relationships. By connecting social movements practices with gender struggles and small victories at home, this paper hopes to emphasize the importance of democratic social movement structures in the struggle for social change throughout different axis of oppression and resistance.

Author

• Graciela G Monteagudo, UMass Amherst, STPEC