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Beyond The Polls: Political Languages and Practices ff The 15m Movement

Researcher name: Antoni Aguiló

This project explores the forms of high-intensity democracy practiced by the 15M movement (the outrage in Spain) in the context of crisis of representative democracy and the struggle against neoliberal globalization and its effects. The 15M movement is a carrier of democratic languages and practices that challenge dominant (neo-) liberal ways of thinking and doing politics; and introduces counter-hegemonic forms of participation, social mobilization and collective action. These languages and practices can contribute to the creation of a ‘new political common sense’ in a horizon of democratization, demo-diversity and experimentalism. The Project addresses the conditions of these political languages and practices emerging – the scenarios, subjects and forms of sociability that make them possible – as well as the possibility of establishment, and departure from the concept of intercultural and interpolitical translation proposed by the ‘Epistemology of the South’ of Boaventura de Sousa Santos, including features of reciprocal intelligibility between diverse alternative experiences of democracy.


Keywords: 15M Movement, counterhegemonic globalization, demodiversity, politics on the streets, popular assemblies, intercultural democracy
Countries of reference: Spain