An Archive of Emotions: On the Afterlives and Futurity of 15M

Abstract

ABSTRACT On the tenth anniversary of the 15M protests, this article questions the affective world in which the protests materialized in 2011 in relation to the reception and mediation of 15M in its afterlives. Should future historians take up the task of documenting the shared affects and emotions in circulation around the events of 2011, what would this archive of emotions look like? How would one describe the affective world of the social context in which the 15M protests erupted in 2011? What experiences would this archive of emotions register as representative of both the time of 15M and the tempo in which, one decade later, its many ramifications continue to unfold? How can such an archive be kept alive—in a manner of speaking—thereby contributing to the reactivation of this repertoire of protest actions in the afterlives of 15M?