Emotions and rationality in political consciousness

Abstract

I am an academic working in social sciences with a clear objective of doing useful work with a view to improving social justice. That’s what definetely gives more meaning to my professional life. I think that to do that today means unavoidably doing critical work. It means working mostly in a couterhegemonic form to produce ‘different’ evidence and to unmask taken-for-granted mainstream knowledge. I am a sociologist and a critical economist. Both disciplines have helped me to develop a ‘suspicious’ attitude towards that knowledge serving policies and practices. How so? It’s difficult to identify a single reason. I grew up within a family that experienced political and cultural opression under Francoism. My father was not a political activist in strict sense, but was an excellent professional working in the public health sector. He was visibly critical of the dictatorship. My parents and other relatives were concerned to teach us why Catalan language could not be ‘seen’ and heard in the street, on TV, or in most of institutions. They taught my brothers and sisters and myself the meaning of personal and collective freedom. When Franco died I was twelve years old, but my child-eyes had already seen radical demonstrations in the street and saw my aunt lying in bed full of bruises after being beaten up by the police. I was aware about the death penalty approved by Franco to assasinate the radical anarchist Salvador Puig Antich and could feel the atmosphere of an active civil society fighting for political change. My adolescence took place, therefore, in a moment of social and political change in Catalan society. Clandestine organisations were emerging, the Communist Party was legalised, the first general elections took place and I could see the pride of a generation being able to vote for the first time in its life. The attempted coup d’état of 1981 showed me how scared people were of the military forces, and how precious is political freedom when you start enjoying it. Although the Spanish political transition is often presented as an exemplary one, because there was no bloodshed, I am not especially proud of it. Bringing change by forgeting the past is not only unfair but it is also an incomplete process. Wounds do not close easily, and we are still experiencing it today because not everything has been said. However, from a personal point of view, the arrival of democracy, the existence of political pluralism and the need to reconstruct a society gave me the context to engage in endless debates with my university colleagues, and to observe social, political and cultural change in a society living in an accelerated way while feeling the fear to loose freedom again. As a result, I belong to the first generation of Spanish people that entered the university and the labour market in a normalised—though incomplete—democratic context. We were able to choose for the first time, we felt free to speak, and we started enjoying civil and political rights as something normal. My political conscioussness those years extended also to those movements in Latin America fighting for socialism. The Sandinist revolution in Nicaragua was ‘the’ model in the early eighties, and in my socialist context was celebrated as the correct one compared to the Cuban Castroism. As any other middle class youngster I had of course my ‘Che’ poster in my room which added the necessary romantic dose to dream of socialist change and freedom. At that time I became aware that no matter what I would do with my professional life, I would try to work in Latin America and for Latin America. That’s something I can be proud of because I have been able to do it on many occasions. After almost two decades of academic and political work in education I had the chance to engage in a different experience in public sector administration. In 2006 I became Deputy Ombudsman for Children’s Rights in Catalonia. I had the opportunity to intervene on human rights’ violations to children in my country, and to have a better projection of my work and ideas. For four years I was able to realise in-situ how social and political justice is often denied to the most disadvantaged. The experience was extremely useful to me. On the one hand, I had the chance to detect the magnitude and the forms in which children’s rights are violated and to have a ‘direct’ experience and knowledge of invisible and silent children. On the other hand, I could realise that theoretical knowledge and academic work is absolutely meaningful when working about ‘real problems of real people’.