Between flags: The political and affective mobilization of flags in the Catalan sovereignty movement
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56247/qua.499Keywords:
Affects, flag, independentism, cartography, elicitationAbstract
Flags are national objects capable of storing and maintaining divergent affections and releasing them at a given moment. This article aims to understand the emotional functioning of flags in the Catalan sovereignty movement. To do so, we try to describe how the national flags that appear in the Catalan conflict (the blue Estelada, the yellow Estelada and the Spanish Constitutional flag) make different and contradictory affects flourish in the sovereignty movement, are framed in diverse affective
processes, and acquire an emotional directionality and location that create and configure political and affective boundaries within Catalan independence. To identify
emotions and affects, we perform an affective elicitation of free narration about the flags-in-conflict to activists and people close to the Catalan sovereignty and secessionist
movement. As a result, affective cartographies are constructed for each flag and relate the elicited affects with the political and social organizations of Catalan sovereignty. The data show that what we feel and what moves us is
apprehended in a process of constant political interaction between material-semiotic objects and subjects; that is, the idea of a politicization of affects is reaffirmed.
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