#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #SPAIN #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) Spain, cnt #429 Editorial| - Let's imagine a good world Garlic Antonio Carter - In memory of comrade José Manuel Lara (ca, de, it, pt)[machine translation]

 Slippery, obtuse, generic, old, strange, complex, philosophical, interpretable,

controversial, useless, utopian... these are common adjectives when someone who
claims to be on the left is asked what the word emancipation means... Diagnosis
of a problem. A serious problem, because it is about imagination: political
imagination on the one hand, and utopian imagination on the other. Politics, as
modes of collective action that question the existing social and political order.
Utopian, in terms of the ability to create and build coexistence-fair and free
alternatives.
In its verbal form «emancipate», the RAE proposes 2 meanings, concise but dense
in its meaning, although somewhat «old» in its statements: 1. Release of parental
authority, guardianship or servitude. 2. Free yourself from any type of
subordination or dependency.

If we look closely, the first meaning is strictly legal or institutional and,
therefore, essentially paternalistic: something or someone liberates whoever
from... The second meaning, fortunately, calls for action, it is not known
whether it is individual or collective. or both. , which is freed "from any type
of subordination or dependency". The first speaks of a "superior" instance that
defines and regulates the act and fact of "emancipating oneself". The second
invites autonomous, individual or collective action.

The double definition of the Academy has the virtue of placing the act of
emancipating oneself in the context of what one must "free" oneself from. Hence
the problematic character of the term, since it necessarily appeals to the prior
reflection of what each one thinks, feels or wishes to emancipate. The vices of
the definition are, however, correlative to the two meanings. On the one hand,
there is the intrinsic ambiguity of who is the subject of emancipation: an
individual or a collective subject. And, on the other hand, if such a subject is
passive ("emancipated") or active ("emancipated").

Therefore, the questions are diverse: What is there to be emancipated from? Do
you set me free or do I set myself free? Is it basically an individual or
essentially collective act?

But more worrying, if not important, is to ask: why should one be emancipated?
The "what for" places us in the always uncomfortable position of thinking,
creating and inventing an emancipated horizon. An exercise that seems more
literary than sociopolitical, since it is assumed that the population is "cured"
of the disease of utopias, and therefore it is necessary to be realistic,
pragmatic and possible, without the need to appeal to maximum horizons of social
equality. and full freedom Well, whoever, in their right mind, dares to define,
in an intelligible and useful way, another type of society that is not the
existing one, improved perhaps with a little more freedom and with a little less
inequality. We have been inoculated with the fear of imagining ourselves as free
and equal beings, in a self-organized society by free and equal people, because
so much imagination becomes counterproductive: it is not that without realizing
it we are opening the algorithm of dystopias, which of course we do . they do not
want to.

But there is no better antidote to dystopia than a good dose of utopia. In the
plural, since utopian horizons are and must always be open, not unique, but
multiple and diverse, since there are no more reliable, credible and effective
horizons of freedom and equality than those built by people who think, feel and
want to emancipate themselves , from below, in a concrete context and social reality.

Imagination is the spring to articulate new ways of coexisting, living and
relating. Putting emancipation at the center of the debate is to open the daily
trade union and social struggles to the reflection of its ultimate consequences.
It is to question our own ideas to glimpse the possible alternatives of how to
build ourselves individually and socially with parameters that are not those of
exploitation, oppression, manipulation and prevailing authoritarianism.

Although perplexity assails us, there are so many stubborn reasons to speak of
emancipation, that by doing so we are carrying out an emancipatory act in itself.

https://www.cnt.es/noticias/imaginemos-un-mundo-bueno/
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