In the eye of the hurricane: protagonism and uncertainty in the 2013 June Journeys

Abstract

This article discusses the perception that activists of the 2013 June Journeys have about their participation in such protests. It starts from the contemporary literature on political confrontation and social movement organizations to approach the singular through which subjects project themselves and their groups as protagonists of an event that was chaotic and gigantic. In dialogue with the debates about connective action and the growing challenges to hierarchical structures of political organization, the text explores how many subjects place themselves at the center of events that they themselves recognize as having run them over. Based on 50 interviews conducted in São Paulo and Belo Horizonte, we address this paradoxical ambivalence between being run over by history and being its protagonist. It is not argued here that such ambivalence is the result of an individualistic narcissism, but that the hugeness represented by June emerges, precisely, from this reticular articulation of protagonists.