New Actors on Stage: Analysis of the Emergent Forms of Collective Action in the European Context

Abstract

In this article our focus will be on civil society’s responses triggered by the imposition of the societies of austerity. The analysis will be centred on an emerging collective actor, the indignados, and on the conditions that fostered its formation and processes involved in the construction of its identity. To accomplish this task, we retrieved Ernesto Laclau’s political logic of populism and the concept of political developed by Chantal Mouffe and applied them to the formation of the indignados’ identity. This process is conceived in terms of the construction of antagonistic frontiers which divide the social into two opposing fields. This conception allows us to develop an analysis based on the notion of social conflict, as well as a reflection on the potentialities embodied by this new social actor, despite their presentation by the dominant discourse as utopic and therefore impossible. In this proposal, it is our aim to provide a better understanding of what is at stake when we talk about the indignados and a clearer perception of the political dimension of both struggle and resistance.