Neoliberalism and the re-politicization of the individual in the Chile of today.

Abstract

This article aims to explain the eruption of the massive mobilizations in Chile during the last 15 years through the emergence of the process of re-politicization of the individual and the particularization of the struggles' experience. It is based on interviews conducted in the context of a doctoral thesis with activists of three social movements: the movement of pobladores for a dignified housing, the movement of secondary school students and the LGBTQ movement. The key question here is the role that the individual plays in these

mobilizations. The hypothesis underlying this work is that current social mobilizations have managed to mobilize massively while maintaining the individual as the value axis of this process and thus overcome the apparent dichotomy between collective action and individualism. In this way, individualism as a sign of social fragmentation has given way to a re-politicization of the individual that has led to a new form of social protest and collectivism whose anchor point is the value of the singular subjectivities that are present in the mobilization process.