Prefigurative Politics by Paul Raekstad

Author:Paul Raekstad [Gradin Saio Sofa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2020-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

5

The Personal is Political

When telling the story of how prefigurative politics became an influential concept, most authors focus on its anarchist and Marxist roots. This story tends to concentrate on the opposition to class oppression and exploitation. As we have shown in earlier chapters, this history is essential and is rightly given a lot of attention since it has been so influential on the left over the past 200 years. What we have also argued, however, is that antiracist and feminist movements have been crucial in the development of prefigurative politics, especially in recent decades, which is not usually given the attention it deserves.

This chapter elaborates on what we have called the personal-is-political argument for prefigurative politics. This argument spells out, in more direct terms, how feminist and antiracist ideas feed into the foundations of prefigurative politics. It can be understood as a feminist and antiracist interpretation of the other main argument of this book, the praxis argument (see Chapter 4). The latter showed that, if people are to implement a free, equal, and democratic society, they need to develop the right powers, drives, and consciousness in order to do so, which can only be done through practice. The personal-is-political argument elaborates on these ideas by showing what feminism and antiracism tell us about what kind of practice that should be. As we will see, among its main insights are, firstly, that prefigurative activists must not only create formally equal decision-making structures but must also address informal and indirect hierarchies and inequalities. Added to this, we must recognise the role that emotions and personal experiences play in our politics. Finally, we must grapple with the ways in which different forms of oppression, whether classed, racialised or gendered, intersect with each other.

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