The 15-M movement in its cultural context

Abstract

This essay is an exploration of the wide cultural context of the “indignados” or 15-M movement in the Spanish state. It starts by proposing that 15-M is one of the symptoms of a widespread erosion of the hegemonic “Culture of the transition”, which established a series of tacit agreements around the necessity of a vertical and expert society, based in the political parties system and financial capitalism. This erosion has been fostered by the emergence of the new digital technologies of communication, which have allowed the propagation of horizontal and empowering practices of cooperation. Instead of reproducing a public sphere traditionally ruled by the opinions of individual “experts”, people are using Internet for the creation of “knowledge communities” in which no one knows everything, but everyone shares what they know. Through this sharing cultures sometimes emerge projects in which communities are able of managing their resources in a sustainable way, by creating “commons”. 15-M showed its special sensibility towards forms of quotidian cooperation and common creation by trying to collectively manage the sustainability of common life in squares and camps. The movement should actually be understood, like the rest of the international “squares” movements that emerged in 2011, as a way of resisting the attempts of neoliberal elites at privatizing common wealth on a global scale.