The Black Protests: a Struggle for (Re)Definition of Intimate Citizenship.

• Main Authors: Radosław Nawojski, Magdalena Pluta, Katarzyna Zielińska
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Adam Mickiewicz University 2019-05-01
• Series: Praktyka Teoretyczna
• Subjects: intimate citizenship; reproductive rights; women’s rights; public sphere
• Online Access: https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/prt/article/view/19008

This article focuses on an analysis of the redefinitions of the visions of intimate citizenship in the arenas created by the recent women’s protests in Poland. The 2016 and 2018 attempts by the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish Parliament, to introduce amendments to the existing law regulating access to abortion in Poland stirred dramatic social mobilisations and widespread social protests labelled with the umbrella term “Black Protests”. We see these mobilisations not only as a protest, but also as attempt to (re)define dominant notions of citizenship, and in particular, as a quest for a new model of intimate citizenship, i.e. a public reconceptualisation of the rights regarding the private/intimate sphere. Our article offers an in-depth analysis of these reconceptualisations. It unfolds in the following way. Firstly, we discuss the phenomena of the Black Protests and Polish Women’s Strikes and present the context of their emergence as well as their agenda. Secondly, we briefly discuss the issue of intimate citizenship. We then present the methodology as well as discuss the empirical material used for our analysis. In the final part, we reconstruct the visions of (intimate) citizenship emerging from the collected material.