Untangling the radical imaginaries of the Indignados' movement: Commons, autonomy and ecologism

The "movements of the squares" involved first and foremost an awakening or re-discovering of the radical imagination both in the square encampments, and in later projects created with the movements' decentralizations. The new alternative projects born after the square have materialized the movements' radical imaginaries in urban environments, extending and deepening concerns of broad political change over everyday life. Based on ethnographic work on the Indignados' movement in the city of Barcelona, this paper delves more particularly into three Indignant urban projects. It untangles three common and interlinked radical imaginaries both embodied and actualized in participants' social practices, and further orienting their future visions: commons, autonomy and ecologism. Scrutinizing their meaning, it also sheds light on connected issues such new ways of interfacing with local state authorities and redefining the boundaries between the public and the common. It shows that the ecologism imaginary cannot be properly grasped if disconnected from the other two imaginaries, and argues that a transformative eco-politics can only be claimed as such if it is able to articulate such an integrated vision typical of "socio-environmental movements".