The Movement is a Torch: Cultivating Intergenerational Resistance to Authoritarianism via Collective Memory

• In Event: Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 6: Movements in the Face of Authoritarianism

Abstract

One consequence of democratic backsliding in the United States has been the restriction of inclusive educational and research-related content in public schools and universities. In the face of targeted restrictions on knowledge that challenges white supremacist and heteronormative ideologies, I examine how and to what extent social movement communities resist authoritarian control of knowledge production. Through interview data and ethnographic participant observation, I find that Latinx and migrant BIPOC communities in Arizona resist authoritarian control of knowledge through establishing alternative and subversive education systems and through intergenerational transmission of critical stories of social change. I argue that these forms of resistance function as a kind of collective memory that continues to initiate people into social movements that envision new, more democratic and anti-hierarchical ways of being. My research contributes to not only understandings of what motivates long term movement activism, but also understandings of how collective memory and collective memory maintenance can function as a form of resistance to democratic backsliding.

Author

• Carolina Hernandez, University of Pittsburgh