April 19, 2024

Democracy in the Twenty-first Century

Stefania Barca e Teresa Cunha

In the Rojava region of Northern and Eastern Syria, the Kurdish Freedom Movement (KFM) has instigated a non-State democratic revolution known as Democratic Confederalism. Formulated by Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan in the early 21st century, this paradigm is based on three fundamental principles: radical democracy, women's liberation, and ecology. While radical democracy has received its fair share of research attention, both in itself and in its correlation with the other two pillars, the nexus between women's liberation and ecology remains inadequately explored in the existing literature. Considering how these two pillars are also important to both feminist and environmental politics in the 21st century, this thesis investigates the ways in which they have been articulated by Democratic Confederalism and mobilized by the Kurdish Women's Movement (KWM) both in Rojava and at the transnational level. In so doing, the research gives an original contribution to ongoing debates on the nexus between feminist, decolonial, and ecological politics, especially from the Global South. It combines Feminist Political Ecology with Decolonial Theory and builds on nearly five years of militant ethnography with the KWM in Rojava and Europe.

The manuscript comprises two parts: the first opens with a historical overview of Democratic Confederalism, providing research questions, hypotheses, methodology, theoretical framework, and a summary of research outcomes; the second comprises three articles, the first two already published and the third in the process of publication.

The first article elucidates the interplay between ecofeminism and Democratic Confederalism, critically examining Öcalan's theory of capitalist-patriarchal modernity. It scrutinizes the Kurdish leader's historical analysis of Mesopotamia's matristic ecologically driven societies as the foundational premise for both his communalist emancipatory project, and of Jineolojî - in Kurdish the "science of women and life", representing a novel method of knowledge production and socio-ecological transformation promulgated by the KWM during the last decade. The second article explores the emancipatory potential of the Kurdish matristic perspective within the women's led revolutionary process in Rojava. Employing a decolonial feminist approach, it analyses Jineolojî's pedagogical strategies to revitalize matristic knowledge, memories, and modes of reproduction of life, highlighting women's socio-ecological agency within the broader democracy-building process in the region. The third and final article undertakes an analysis of the challenges faced by Jineolojî's activists in translating their epistemology and worldview to feminist queer movements in Europe. Moreover, it explores the inherent potential of this translation process in fostering decolonial forms of North/South feminist alliances.

Ultimately, this thesis offers an innovative understanding of Democratic Confederalism, portraying the ecological dimension of its emancipatory project as inextricably linked with the KWM' struggle for depatriarchization and decolonization. The notion of a "matristic perspective" at the heart of the Kurdish paradigm is introduced to shed light on this link. It represents a decolonial ecofeminist pedagogy and praxis employed by Jineolojî to recentre the values of socio-ecological reproduction in the context of the Rojava's revolution, and to advance decolonial feminist alliances capable of challenging patriarchy, capitalism and coloniality from the Global South to the North.

Keywords: Feminist Political Ecology; Decolonial Theory; Democratic Confederalism; Kurdish Women's Movement; Matristic Perspective