Dying for your ideas. The Romantic Rhetoric of Kirchnerism (Argentina, 2003-2015)

DAGATTI, MARIANO

Nueva Orleans

Congreso; XXII International Society for the History of Rhetoric Conference; 2019

International Society for the History of Rhetoric

Political rhetoric uses many different channels of communication to provide us with a vision of public life. We listen to political speeches on the radio, we watch political events on television, we participate in political ceremonies, we attend demonstrations and protests, and we follow political leaders on social media. Groups, parties and leaders develop ethical worlds that attempt to inculcate citizens, both crowds and individuals, with a whole mind-set of values and concerns. The purpose of my presentation is to present a piece of research on the political rhetoric of Kirchnerism, an Argentinian political group named after Néstor Kirchner, President of Argentina from 2003 to 2007, and his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, President from 2007 until 2015. Now, you may wonder what Kirchnerism has to do with populism but the answer to this question is really quite simple. The term ?populism? has often been used by activists, sympathizers, adversaries and the media of every ideological persuasion, to praise or criticize the Kirchners? political movement. Academically speaking, the main problem in using the term ?populism? is that it was already over-saturated with meanings, interpretations and conflicting definitions when it was appropriated by the social and linguistic sciences. It was a label that individuals and groups under research had already used in controversial ways, often as a term of contempt. This derogatory use of the word is an impediment that not even major contemporary works on the subject such as Ernesto Laclau´s On Populist Reason have managed to get rid of. Like the word ?fascist,? it has become a term of abuse and a source of lexical confusion. Paradoxically, however, as Marc Angenot (2018) points out, ?populism? was initially used in the social sciences to avoid resorting to the weasel words of popular controversy, foremost of which was ?fascism.? We might ask then if nowadays the term ?populism? is part of the problem or part of the solution. Is it still able to define specific phenomena precisely or has it become a catch-all expression for any non-ideal functioning of Western democracies at the turn of the century?I would like to propose a rhetoric-based response to these questions from an interdisciplinary perspective. The scope of my inquiry is limited here to my own country, Argentina, and a particular historical period, the first fifteen years of the 21st century. My hypothesis is that a fundamental characteristic of Kirchnerism as a political identity is its commitment to Romantic rhetoric. In this sense, I am interested in exploring the rhetorical strategies of Kirchnerism for building long-term identity groups (more or less stable political identities) in post-crisis neoliberal Argentina. In this way, I intend to contribute to discussions on political rhetoric, with specific reference to those considered ?if not by all at least by a majority? as populists.