Communicative Imaginaries in Social Movements: The Role of Communication in Mediating Prefigurative Action between Present and the Imagined Future Social Change

The importance of the communicative dimension in contemporary social movements has been widely recognised, given their self-definition from their discursive practices (Castells) and since it becomes a prominent part of their organisational structures (Bennett and Segerberg). Simultaneously, although the importance of a proposal –besides to the denial of protest– of an imagined future of social change for these socio-political agents, synthesised in the slogan “Another world is possible”, has been pointed out, the importance and role of this imaginary of a possible project –opposed to the neoliberal “There is no alternative”–, have not been sufficiently investigated. Based on a qualitative case study of four Latin American social movements –through in-depth interviews with members and critical discursive analysis of their communication spaces–, this study aims to analyse the issue from the intersection of both dimensions: communication –given its dual phenomenological nature (material and symbolical/ideological) (Gramsci)– and imaginaries of social change. Main findings show that, contrary to the absence of a plan in so-called insurgencies noted by previous studies (Arditi), the analysed social movements have a proposal for social change that articulates concrete objectives with more utopian goals of an imagined ideal future, which is articulated with the communicative dimension in two senses. Communication becomes, on the one hand, a tool to share/socialise the objectives and imaginaries associated with that future among members/sympathisers, and, on the other hand, an end in itself, as a space to put into practice pre(con)figura(c)tive –this is, prefigurative actions in common– dynamics of an imagined scenario of communicative social change characterised by horizontality, democratisation and participation. In conclusion, this dual nature of those communicative imaginaries integrates two parallel/simultaneous processes of articulating visibility and visibilising articulation that become a two-level mediation in both: 1) material processes of mobilisation and organisation; and 2) subjective processes of motivation and creation.