Whether the 15M or the movimiento okupa in Spain, Nuit debout or the Gilets jaunes movement in France, recurring independence movements in New Caledonia, pro-Palestinian solidarity movements in Italy, the Zapatista demonstrations in Mexico, Gen Z protests in Peru, protests against the far-right in Rumania, or digital feminist protest movements such as #Balancetonporc, #Niunamenos, and #Cuéntalo – the ‘new protest culture’ (Sidiq 2024) appears particularly vibrant in Romance-speaking spaces. Over the past fifteen years – after the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, and in the face of economic and ecological crises, struggles over past and present colonial power relations, increasing feminicides and on-going discrimination against FLINTA* people – physical and digital public spaces are being appropriated, occupied, and defended: Zones à défendre (ZAD) have been set up, construction sites blocked, natural resources defended, flash mobs staged, and petitions and shitstorms launched on social media (Lüsebrink/Dausend/Rampeltshammer 2023, 9; Ibáñez 2017, 49).

These political and cultural performances in public space illustrate a shift in repertoires of contention away from conventional (demonstrations, strikes) toward more confrontational protest (Illades 2014, 429). The new protest culture foregrounds multiple crises – social, ecological, economic, postcolonial – and the intersectional power relations within them – classism, sexism, racism, ableism, ageism, homo- and transphobia. However, global authoritarian processes and intensifying crises also produce “shrinking spaces” for protest (Della Porta/Steinhilper 2021, 2), making the relationship between protest and the state increasingly conflictual (Gagliano 2017, 12). Media often sensationalizes clashes with the police rather than treating protest as a legitimate part of civil society (Rucht 2004, 135; Seferiades and Johnston 2012, 17). Protest, like the Gilets jaunes in France are framed as a threat to public order (Treder 2023, 298-299), following logics of “moral panics” (Hall et al. 1978, 3) and contributing to a marking of especially progressive protest as the Other to the state (Fritsch/Kretschmann 2022, 19). This framing legitimizes increased protest repression and a securitized handling of protest (Wood 2014) – harder policing, preventive surveillance, and show trials –, including the use of states of emergency regulations (Codaccioni 2019, 32f.): as it has been the case in France or Peru.

The current protest culture – and how it is handled by politics and media – has also left its mark on fiction in recent years. Over the past decade, numerous novels, films, and series have adopted affirmative, reflective, or critical stances toward this new protest culture and portrayed it accordingly: Juan A. Molina’s La malvada felicidad (2023) and Javier Gallegos’ La caída del imperio (2024) on the 15M movement; the Netflix series Okupas on the squatter scene; Hary Rabary’s #ZaKoa (2023) and Dolores Fonzi’s Belén (2025) on #MeToo; Barbara Zamora López’s Días de rabia y rebeldía (2024) on the Zapatista movement; Anne Boquel’s L’enfant de la rage (2024) and Jean-Bernard Pouy’s Ma ZAD (2018) on occupied zones; and Enzo Lesourt’s Le soulèvement du Pacifique (2025) on the New Caledonian independence movement. These artifacts can be understood not only as media of communication but, at times, as acts of protest per se, as they create space for marginalized truths and alternative realities (Hiergeist 2021, 70). Contemporary protest culture often blurs the boundaries between art and protest (Reed 2016, 79–80): flash mobs often incorporate dance and singing, and few demonstrations do without music, logos, graffiti, chants, or protest poetry (Donath 2018, 371; Werbner/Webb/Spellman-Poots 2014, 5–7). Performative practices also serve as protection against state repression, as in the case of the Rebel Clown Army, which playfully imitates and thereby subverts protest policing (Klepto 2004, 410). Protest can be understood as a performance that requires a specific, theatrical, and ritualized use of body and language to constitute a collective, a performative community, in the sense of “bodies in alliance” (Butler 2015, 66). Intersectional power relations are punctually renegotiated through concrete practices of solidarity in shared spaces (Butler 2015, 81).

The interdisciplinary workshop “Reorganizing Societies: New Protest Imaginaries and Performances in Contemporary Romance-speaking Spaces” invites contributors from political science, sociology, cultural studies, media studies, and literary studies to engage with factual and fictional imaginaries and performances of progressive protest in contemporary Romancespeaking spaces based on the following questions:

• How are protests, revolts, and/or social movements – as well as the state, police and media (repressive) responses – imagined, narrated, and framed in political speeches, press releases, social media posts, essays, films, or literary texts?
• To what extent can protest be understood as cultural and political performance with characteristic modes of staging? Which speech acts, symbolic forms of communication, bodily practices, and media are used and in what form? Which spaces are staged and used
  in what ways? How are intersectional power relations negotiated?
• In which literary or cinematic genres and through which media is protest currently preferentially expressed? To what extent are these predestined for the expression of participation, criticism, and resistance? How is digital protest culture changing the staging and imaginaries of protest?
• Which political and artistic histories of movements from Romance-speaking spaces are referred to in the articulation of protest (anarchist groups, anti-colonial and/or queer and feminist movements)?

Please send your abstract, which may also be located at the intersection of science/art/activism, in the range of 1500-2000 characters by January 12, 2026, to katharina.fritsch@univie.ac.at and teresa.hiergeist@univie.ac.at.