Is it all about neoliberalism? Exploring the notions of "public" and "common" as references for grassroots organizations. Insights from Milan.

This article aims to offer a critical point of view on the concept of 'self-organization' within a neoliberal framework, questioning the ability of self-organized grassroots movement to preserve their role of continuously restructuring the space of 'the political' (Rancière, 2003), core of the democratic relationship between society and institutions. The first part of this paper focuses on how neoliberalism operated a transformation of self-organization into 'self-regulation'. Such a shift is part of the changes that affected the Welfare State, especially by the promotion of the rhetoric of self-responsibility and 'activation' of individuals in production of their own welfare, eliminating, with the help of governmental devices, generative political conflict. Referring to the context of Milan, particularly interesting in terms of neoliberalization of welfare policies, the second part of this paper reflects on how grassroots organizations, whose aim has always been the one of producing 'political' spaces of interaction for the definition of public welfare policies, relate with the framework of analysis that has been described above; especially questioning their reference either to the discourse of 'public good' or 'common good' (related to the discourse on 'The Commons') and how this distinction influences their practices, stressing problematic issues and potentialities of these differences.