This essay analyzes what I call processes of destitution as a result of the various social movements that took place in Spain throughout the 2010s. I argue that the exhaustion of the Regime of ’78 meant an epistemological turn away from hegemonic concepts such as consensus, truth, and historical agreement toward those central to a new destituent process: dissent, divergence, and plurality, among others. Over the course of this essay, I carry out a genealogical review of the two intersecting social movements of the period which drove that change: first, the anti-austerity movement—better known as the indignados, or 15M, movement and its political derivatives, such as municipal platforms, the “mareas,” and Podemos—and second, the Catalan pro-independence movement. Finally, based on Carl Schmitt's political theology, I study the Spanish State's reaction beginning in 2017 as the creation of a state of exception based on the intensification of “the political” and on a shift in the “friend/enemy” paradigm, from a relationship between nation-states to an intranational relationship between the Spanish State and the Catalan pro-independence movement.
Processes of Destitution in Spain: Unavowable Communities between the Regime of ’78 and the Total State
Ignasi Gozalo-Salellas is a visiting assistant professor at Bryn Mawr College. He has previously taught at The Ohio State University. He holds a PhD in Hispanic studies from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently working on his first manuscript, Visual Hegemonies in Early Democratic Spain (forthcoming). His work has been published in MLN, Hispanic Review, Hispanófila, and 452ºF, among others. He is also a filmmaker and media contributor, with a broad and long experience in television, documentaries, and digital media.
Ignasi Gozalo-Salellas; Processes of Destitution in Spain: Unavowable Communities between the Regime of ’78 and the Total State. boundary 2 1 August 2021; 48 (3): 191–213. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/01903659-9155803
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