Structures without soul and immediate struggles: rethinking militant particularism in contemporary Spain

Abstract

The focus of the article is the connection between the production in the present of particular memories of the past and the ability to frame present-day conflicts in terms of particular or universal claims and transformation projects. Through referring to past struggles and their outcomes, the process of framing will clarify what renders certain possibilities legitimate while excluding others. This connection between past and present realities, memories and struggles will appear in the reading of past struggles in terms of heroism or defeat, and in the way of incorporating those memories into present-day struggles in positive or negative terms. These different and interrelated processes express interlinked and diverse forms of dispossession that are simultaneously shaped by and contribute to shape the possible spaces and scales in which struggle can be meaningfully waged...