Video: The Desire to Change Everything

Massive feminist mobilizations emerged around the world over the recent years. While often building on practices and ideas of the previous social movements, something new and specific can be observed in these mobilizations. Activist and theoretician Verónica Gago in her book Feminist International [2] “documents the birth of a novel kind of feminist power rooted in the streets where people assemble and the bedrooms and households where new visions of liberation are taking shape”.

We took her inspiring analysis situated in Argentina’s #NiUnaMenos movement – where hundreds of thousands of people gathered over the last years – as a basis of our discussion. What is feminist potencia? How can we think about sexist violence outside the boundaries of “domestic violence”? And how have the public assemblies worked as spaces where new politics was negotiated? With the researcher Mina Baginová, we discussed the context of East and Central Europe: how feminist practices are situated and manifested there and how have they developed over the last years.

Together we contemplated on how we can support each other and learn from each other's struggles embedded in different historical experiences, epistemologies, and geographies; how we can create a tangible international feminist solidarity praxis.

Watch the discussion that was part of the feminist festival Artwife in Diera do sveta. The discussion was co-organized by ASPEKT.

Verónica Gago is a leader in Argentina’s #NiUnaMenos movement (Not One More!), as both a theoretician and an activist. She is also a Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, Professor at the Instituto de Altos Estudios, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, and Assistant Researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET).

Mina Baginová is a researcher at FATIGUE and explores the contemporary feminist social movements and women's mobilizations in the midst of far-right and conservative anti-gender politics in East Central Europe. She is a member of EASA (European Association of Social Anthropologists); a programme coordinator of ‘Mobilizing the Planet’ annual conference organized by the Applied Anthropology Network; an activist in international feminist CLARA Collective.

Zuzana Maďarová is an activist in Slovakia’s initiative Nebudeme ticho (We won’t be silent) and feminist organization ASPEKT. She is also a researcher at Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava.