The Generative Politics of Presentism in Post-15M Spain

This essay revises post-15M movement political party landscape, emphasizing the intentional yet unusual use of the present within the New Left's organizing grammar. Against sectors of the traditional Left, who see presentism as a product of neoliberalism, I claim that in the post-15M conjuncture, the present constituted a battleground in the struggle for a dignified life. First, I focus on the Catalan left-wing nationalist party CUP's use of anarchist symbols to suggest that references to sabotage were deployed to disrupt parliamentary politics, forcing constant interruption. Second, I analyze Podemos founding member Iñigo Errejón's speech after the party's 2016 national election defeat, where his rhetoric linked the temporality of the present with anti-austerity protestors’ embodied presence. Last, I read the rise of neomunicipalisms as another iteration of presentism, aiming to politicize everyday life. To conclude, I advance that such material practices of “generative presentism” problematize presentism's assumed depoliticizing nature.