Barcelonan Okupas

Squatter Power!

Stephen Luis Vilaseca

• Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
• Year: 2013
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781611476293
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 21st Century History
• Index: History

Barcelonan Okupas: Squatter Power! is the first book to combine close-readings of the representations of Spanish squatters known as okupas with the study of everyday life, built environment, and city planning in Barcelona. Vilaseca broadens the scope of Spanish cultural studies by integrating into it notions of embodied cognition and affect that respond to the city before and against the fixed relations of capitalism. Social transformation, as demonstrated by the okupas, is possible when city and art interrelate, not through capital or the urbanization of consciousness but through bodily thought. The okupas reconfigure the way thoughts, words, images and bodily responses are linked by evoking and communicating the idea of free exchange and openness through art (poetry, music, performance art, the plastic arts, graffiti, urban art and cinema); and by acting out and rehearsing these ideas in the practice of squatting. The okupas challenge society to differentiate the images and representations instituted by state domination or capitalist exploitation from the subversive potential of imagination. The okupas unify theory and practice, word and body, in pursuit of a positive, social vision that might serve humanity and lead the way out of the current problems caused by capitalism.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Okupas and the Entanglement of Word and Body in Barcelona
• Chapter 1: Meet the Barcelonan Okupas (1997–2011)
• Chapter 2: Okupación: Just Crime or Justifiable Protest?
• Chapter 3: Representations of Okupas by Non-okupas
• Chapter 4: Representations of Okupas by Okupas
• Conclusion: Sharing Ideas: Okupas and the United States
• Bibliography
• About the Author