Rob: So, having learned what you've learned from observing what happened in Argentina and elsewhere, where do you see Occupy heading?
Marina: From what I've learned in Argentina as well, I see it continuing, as far as the assemblies and people organizing. Some of the things we can learn from Argentina are that, of the movements in Argentina that continue and deepen, are those movements that are not only using horizontalism, but they also have the autogestion that we were talking about: the self-organization, the self-management, where people are doing something, whether that's preventing evictions, but also about opening places where people can work or live - just finding ways to be very concrete in what we're organizing, or it's an alternative newspaper, or a radio station, but some form of doing. And so, making sure that as our movements are continuing and deepening, that it's not just our radical forms of democracy, but that we are doing things that are meeting people's basic necessities, and creating alternative structures in ways that is self-organized and with autonomy.
Rob: Okay. I'm going through your book, I've made a lot of notes. I'm going through these to get where we're going to go here. There's talk of the idea of protagonism. Now, a protagonist in a story is the hero, is the main character fighting the antagonist. What does protagonism mean in the ideas of horizontalidad?
Marina: Protagonism people talk about both in Argentina horizontalidad, and in other parts of Latin America, coming out of social movements. When people talk about being a protagonist, they mean they have become that main character in their own life. So rather than being passive, they have come forward to be an actor in their life, a protagonist in their life. Not the hero, but becoming important, but important in making decisions, and being an agent, and having say in your life. But people then link that idea of protagonism as, "I am an individual, you know, me, Marina ,now feels like I can do something in my life." Then it's linked to other people in a collective sense. People also use the language of subjectivity, so you're a subject, you're a protagonist, but you're a subject as you relate to other people. So, a lot of these concepts are tied to each other, so you feel like you are that character, but you only work in the story in the novel, you only work as you interact with other characters and working on a similar project, so in social movements, no more autonomous social movements, it's about working together without power over one another to create something new together. So it's meant in a very, very positive way and even though it is "yes" about you as an individual feeling that power and strength, it's also integrally related to being social.
Rob: Now, you've organized the book into a collection of different words where you have a place for people to tell their stories. And so, we've talked a bit about horizontalism, I want to go into that a little bit, and then I want to go through some of these other ideas or concepts. In one part, one of the voices talks about party structure, political structure as macho. Now when I think of macho, I think of male and the other side, I think of the feminine. And it seems to me in some ways the horizontalism, or the bottom up idea, they're both more of a feminine model. They're more of the yin than the yang.
Marina: Yeah, I guess it depends how, when you think about feminine, what one means. I think when people refer to some of the Party structures as macho, what's being referred to is a kind of power, and wielding a power, and wielding a power over, which a lot of people identify as a more male behavior than a female behavior. Not that women can't do it, because they do, and the President of Argentina right now is a woman, and she definitely got some power. But in society and our relationships people identify more. I don't know that it's more of the useful framing, I like to look at it as far as power more of it, but then on the opposite side, I do think that when people in the movements talk about feelings and trust, and what it feels like to be an assembly and how you've changed, that gets identified as female engendered, and I also think that we shouldn't do that either, the same way we shouldn't say that political parties are male and macho. I don't think we should say, because we have positive feelings, that it's female, because it can also be quite exclusive in the process, and it takes a way a little bit of the validity of the emotion to just relegate it to this sphere of emotion, but it's how our society plays out too, so it is contradictory.
Rob: Well, let's go to that emotion. You have a section on politica afectiva, or affective politics. What's that about?
Marina: That's about this, people in the process of talking about their protagonism and their subjectivity and their feelings, but talking about the feelings as the base of the construction of a lot of that - the base that allows horizontal construction that continues, that allows, for autogestion, is that we have to have a base of trust in one another, and a caring for one another. And that's something that I think is very important to distinguish between saying we must have a caring and an affect and a love of base, and saying we have to like each other. You don't have to be friends with someone in the movement. You can actually have some serious negative emotions about that person: you don't like them as a friend. But the base from which you organize together has to have a base of trust, otherwise you can't move forward. When workers take over a workplace and run it together in Argentina, there must be a foundation of trust and care for one another.
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