Tathagatan Ravindran

After decades of neoliberal hegemony, Colombia witnessed a major popular uprising against the same policies in 2021 and the subsequent election of its first progressive government. This research examines the extent to which these processes reflect deeper transformations in political subjectivities, common sense, and local political praxis. The findings show that the uprising produced enduring changes, including the transformation of blockade sites into spaces of memory and counterpublic formation, the emergence of new grassroots leadership and forms of collective organization, and shifts in everyday social relations in popular neighborhoods. At the same time, while the mobilizations weakened neoliberal hegemony, they were marked by ideological hybridity, as elements of dominant and counter-hegemonic common sense coexisted in often contradictory ways within popular subjectivities. This politically engaged research project is conducted in collaboration with community organizations involved in the uprising and includes the creation of a popular repository of oral narratives and audiovisual materials, as well as participatory workshops that bring academic analysis into dialogue with knowledge generated through lived experiences of struggle.