From Where Women Knowledge Workers Stand: the Making of an Emancipatory Standpoint during and since the Gezi Protests

Abstract

Abstract This article rethinks Gezi Protests as a sui generis women’s movement which continues to this day, albeit in a form of unorganized flow. To make this point, the article focuses on the Gezi and Post-Gezi lifeworld experiences of women knowledge workers who participated in the Protests. It is argued that the worker-citizen experiences of these women have provided them with a specific epistemic advantage, which has turned in an emancipatory standpoint during the Gezi and has been reproduced since then – despite significant setbacks. Although still lacking a corresponding feminist counter-hegemonic project, the emancipatory standpoint of the women-in-movement of Gezi Protests is not only negative and adaptive but also formative. It immanently stands for the rationalization of all forms of governance. In that regard, it represents a wish for a new public power rather than a demand for entitlement and recognition by an already existing state.