Reclaiming a Basque youth voice in Navarre: The Iruinkokoa carnival as an agentive chronotope

Abstract

This article analyzes Iruinkokoa, a contemporary Basque carnival in Pamplona-Iruñea, as an example of emerging forms of minority-language activism grounded in carnivalesque critique and performative intervention. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2023 and 2025, the study examines how parody, satire, and collective performance allow young Basque speakers to contest the sociolinguistic marginalization of Basque in Navarre. Moving beyond approaches that treat context as a passive backdrop, the article adopts Blommaert's reinterpretation of Bakhtin's concept of the chronotope to conceptualize context as historically sedimented, socially active, and productive of meaning and action. From this perspective, the article proposes the notion of the “agentive chronotope” to explain how the carnivalesque framework of Iruinkokoa creates the conditions for collective agency. The study argues that carnival temporarily reconfigures dominant indexical meanings surrounding the Basque language and identity while enabling alternative forms of political voice and collective belonging.