Feminist futures? Gender and nation in the pro-independence left in Catalonia

Abstract

This article explores how a feminist approach to politics can resonate within a nation-building project in Catalonia against the backdrop of rising transnational anti-feminist right-wing populism in Europe. Feminism and nationalism have often been presented as oppositional, and nationalist struggles have been considered to further patriarchal regimes. However, nation-building can also be an opportunity to think of feminist alternative futures. The article explores the role of feminism in the political project of the pro-independence Catalan left (Esquerra Independentista), and exposes internal tensions and difficulties in aiming to achieve both independence and feminism in an emancipated Catalonia. Esquerra Independentista adopt two distinctive strategies of feminist politics: the promotion of the indivisibility of social, gender and national struggles (independence, socialism, feminism), and an embodied politics that centralises women’s political agency as a political tool. However, Esquerra Independentista’s proposals for a socialist and feminist future are fragile and limited by internal tensions between the prevalence of masculinist models of doing politics on one hand, and on the other hand, alternative ideas about the strategic importance of class, gender and national oppressions.