Invitation to the IPW Lecture Three Times a Rebel: Body, Gender, Politics and Affects in the Catalan Pro-Independence Radical Left.
Lecturer: Begonya Enguix Grau (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)
Moderation: Birgit Sauer (IPW | Univesity of Vienna)
When: Thursday, 28. November 2019, 18:30 Uhr
Where: Konferenzraum IPW, NIG, 2nd floor, Universitätsstr. 7, 1010 Vienna
Abstract:
The support for independence in Catalonia is only a recent phenomenon since political Catalanism was predominantly based in autonomist or federalist claims. In recent years, however, the percentage of Catalans favorable to an independent Catalan state has been increasing. While over decades, Catalan sovereignty only reached 10% – 15% of the electorate, by 2014, it was already 50% and 47.2% in 2018. The current Catalan independence/sovereign movement is very heterogenous: it consists of institutionalized political parties (ERC and JxCat), pro-Independence organizations including grass-roots movements/assembleary parties (CUP), young grass-roots organizations (Arran) and organizations that derive from ‘civil society’ (ANC and Òmnium). This lecture is based on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in/with CUP and Arran in relation to two different research projects, one based on body and gender and the other based on politics and affect. This qualitative research explores ‘new’ forms of political action in relation to ‘new’ ways of doing politics that require different interpretative and explanatory frameworks. For CUP, and particularly for Arran, new politics are linked to new forms of protest that entangle bodies, gender and affect/s: bodies, gender and affect/s become political and politics become body, gender and affect/s. That is the reason why Arran members affirm that they are ‘three times rebels’ in their claim for a feminist, a socialist and an independent Catalan republic.
An event within the IPW Lectures, an international lecture series of the Department for Political Science, University of Vienna.
