Civil Society, Agency, and Democratisation: Expanding conceptions of democracy in the global south (original) (raw)

In this paper, I will explore the emergence of the autonomous social movements in Argentina and argue that this mode of organising and engagement, which emphasizes a social subjectivity and protagonism instead of the more traditional political subjectivity, is the kind of civil society that participants in the movements believe is what is needed for future of their vision of democracy in Argentina. Importantly, as I agree with Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault on “the indignity of speaking for others,” I will try to animate participant accounts of participation in the assemblies and MTDs to provide a grounded connection to organising in Argentina. Through these accounts, I will argue that the kind of civil society that participants identified as needed for democratization is one that does not try to impose a universality that could become a counter-hegemony, instead focusing on heterogeneity, participation, and subjectivity and agency, and a democracy that shares in these characteristics as a way to dismantle the existing hegemony without necessarily replacing it.. As the MTD Solano say, "We are delighted about this initiative, this genuine quest for democracy without representation, already with no trace of the old. And the discussion is going that way."