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Political Bodies:
In the past few years, emerging and/or reemerging political bodies brought subjects into the political agenda that were either never present in public debate or were never presented as radically as they currently are. The diversity of the issues presented by those individuals and the diversity of structure of political organizations lead us to consider that the actual object of democratization is the organization of social life as a whole. In respect of political area, such democratization is placed in several levels and its main demand is the acknowledgement of the various individuals and issues they defend. Said acknowledgement is directly linked to a break with the conservative tradition, whose political approach gives main importance to the different ways of participation and does not recognize the several conflict and social contradictions areas existing within society. Inclusion of these new political bodies takes place in a public area which is still full of inequalities. The public area, in its State dimension as well as in other levels, where political conflicts are also developed, is still constituted as a social space within which gender, casts, race, generation and sexual repression inequalities, etc. are present. The diversity of political bodies as part of the current democracy context reveals oppressions and power abuse that were naturalized in society structures. Consequently, it is important to perceive, within that dialectical movement, where democracy presses forward in terms of radicalism and where do innovation factors lie, and which are the political practices that maintain or bring back old forms of domination. Understanding the relationship between sexuality, reproduction and production as issues pertaining to material and symbolic levels of the social relations of exploitation and domination is an analytic demand brought by the politicization of the various dimensions of social conflict revealed by social movements. That is to say that the production and wealth accumulation, repression and sexual discrimination relationships and the reproduction model do not constitute social life dimensions of monopoly but, on the contrary, they are constituent elements of a specific social structure. Dissociation among those areas and between those areas and politics is a requirement of the capitalist and patriarchal power system that, by fragmenting and dissociating those different dimensions, weakens the resistance strategies. The unequal cast, race and gender relationships are reproduced and maintained from a power system based on the articulated creation of those inequalities in relation with the different social life areas already mentioned, consequently producing a fragmented perception of the problems. Standing against that system is, in the first place, to acknowledge the various forms of inequalities and discriminations and their tangles. According to Varikas, concerning the origin of contemporary feminist movement: "the strength of that movement lied mostly in its insistence on the structural character of domination manifested in daily life relationships, whose political nature has precisely been denied. It was not about opposing "mentalities" to "institutions", but basically about evidencing that domination was, at the same time, hidden and reproduced by means of powerful institutions as the family, the sexed separation between public and private, the institutionalized heterosexuality, the sexed division and structure of work and jobs, etc." Feminism, from the very beginning, considers control over body and sexuality as a field of analysis and political struggle. It is a feminism legacy to reveal the suffering and the violence exerted on women’s bodies and different forms of sexual repression, which results in a more radical and more human conception of social transformation. Perspective of creation of a radical democracy with citizenship is directly connected to politicization of social conflicts, to an identification of mechanisms of social structure control and reproduction that maintain and reproduce the inequalities and discriminations, and a strategic policy where a collective action is based, at the same time, on the alliance and capacity of facing conflicts and on translation of languages and senses of each movement, in order to allow the intelligibility between the various collective individuals and the capacity of gathering struggles and keeping autonomy. According to Francisco de Oliveira (1998), construction of citizenship and democracy is an endless process because, at the precise moment that citizen and democratic acquisitions are confirmed, the task of expanding already achieved limits restarts. That restart, according to him, must seek the expansion of the already acquired, and must not be mistaken with "eternal return, tireless and hopeless". In this respect, it shall be emphasized that secular State is one of the basic achievements of modern democracy. From the point of view of the emancipating struggles and the current world context this is the objective that has to be relocated as value and as a struggle field for its realization as the essential condition of democratic life. Politicization concerning reproduction and sexuality areas represents a fundamental contribution of the feminist movement, in this dialectical process of creating new values for democracy and citizenship, and, simultaneously, of fighting on what turns up to be a new paradigm of individual freedom and life model. In considering reproductive and sexual life as citizenship areas, a new additional perspective towards creation of a more fair and egalitarian society is opened. Women’s sex and body are the main target on which pleasure market and life trivialization industry is most strongly focused. It is also in this area where the repressive power of churches place all its influence on social life control, even as a strategy of maintenance and expansion of political power. Feminists brought about reflections and political actions into the sexuality and reproduction areas, which led to the creation of a new field of rights -reproductive and sexual rights that integrate the events so experienced as part of the citizenship. That is a fundamental matter for democracy in terms of expansion of the egalitarian relationships to other areas of social life, which at the same time contributes to the transformation of the real meaning of equality. Constructing citizenship for women and men requires the creation of new symbols that promote a world representation where solidarity and freedom senses prevail. Thus, it is necessary on the one hand to combat dominant logic that, apart from producing social poverty and exclusion, simplifies the sense of life and reduces citizens to consumers, and on the other hand to create new egalitarian enchantments that bring new meaning to sense of social justice and cheer up the democratic struggle around it. Coordinated by |
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