ABSTRACT
The conclusion outlines how the social explosion came to a close with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. I argue that the horizontalist kaleidoscope of autonomous social struggles that constituted the social explosion gave way to the prioritization of the central State as the proper institutional mechanism for controlling the spread of the pandemic. More precisely, I focus on how activists attempted to maintain the horizontalist and autonomous foundations of the social explosion from within State institutions, in the end failing to resolve the contradictions between the two modes of political organizing. I additionally discuss how the dedication to the central State was expressed in one particular policy: the closure of national borders. The subaltern fight to close national borders, I argue, was based on a grassroots nationalism that invisibilized migrant lives and their struggles during the pandemic. In the end, the horizontalist and autonomous threads at the foundation of the social explosion have given way to a Statist politics.
