The anti-government bicycle protests in Slovenia: the emotional dimensions and affective states

The management of the pandemic in Slovenia in 2020 was accompanied by a narrowing of public space at an unprecedented rate. Government measures taken in the name of security, human rights and the protection of citizens’ health amounted to a restriction of freedom of movement and peaceful assembly. These events prompted people to mobilise socially. On 24 April 2020, the first bicycle protests took place, where people demonstrated against the expansion of police powers, the excessive restriction of people's freedom of movement, as well as against personal attacks on journalists and journalistic freedom, political pressure on the media and corruption of public officials. In this paper, I examine the role of emotions in the life cycle of social actions of the so-called Bicycle protesters who protested every Friday during the pandemics, a total of 105 Fridays over a period of two years, i.e. until the change of government that followed the regular general elections in April 2022. I examine the emotional content, in order to pay greater attention to how civil society actors evoke, experience and practice the right to peaceful assembly. I will seek to explain how concepts such as affect, feelings and emotions emerge through narratives and understandings of perception, intention, motivation and purposeful behaviour in relation to the right to peaceful assembly. My presentation will focus on the ways in which emotional understandings create context for the exercise of this human right.