THE IMPOLITIC NARRATIVE OF GRASSROOTS MOVEMENTS AGAINST NEOLIBERAL DE-POLITICIZATION. The case of commons

The essay aims to demonstrate that the process of de-politicization does not only affect political institutions but also the inspiring narrative of grassroots and anti-systemic move-ments engaged against neoliberalism. This circumstance is one of the most important reasons why, despite the huge and persistent crisis of neoliberalism, we do not witness a real hegemonic shift, and politics continues to be a very marginal forge of social life, as the neoliberal recipe pre-scribes. De-politicization is the main effect of “horizontalism”, i.e. the descriptive and normative belief that social order is and has to be the ex post result of the interaction dynamics between social actors. Thus, a social order is much more desirable insofar as it leaves out the subject “as is”, promoting a process of self-revelation. Our thesis is that both neoliberalism and the largest part of anti-systemic movements who pretend to oppose to it share this basic frame. The narrative of “commons” represents a special case of what we call “conformist alternatives”. It develops an ambivalent tension: on the one side the search for pre-symbolic spontaneity and, on the other, the unmentionable search for hyper-symbolism. Finally, we identify a structural and then a socio-cultural reason that currently prevent re-politicization.