Consensus or conflict? The problem of an antipolitical imagery of democracy in Argentina

GARZÓN ROGÉ, MARIANA; PERELMAN, MARIANO

Participation, the State, and the people: democratic voices from the South

United Nations University Press

Lugar: Tokyo; Año: 2010; p. 69 - 84

GARZÓN ROGÉ, Mariana and PERELMAN, Mariano (2010). Consensus or conflict? The problem of an anti-political imagery of democracy in contemporary Argentina. En HOWE, Brendan; POPOVSKY, Vesselin and NOTARAS, Mark (eds.). Participation, the State, and the people: democratic voices from the South. Tokyo, United Nations University Press, pp. 69-84. The present paper aims to analyze the political imagery which supports the idea of what democracy is in contemporary Argentina. The analysis shows that we are facing an antipolitical imagery of democracy, according to the theoretical keys which are proposed by Chantal Mouffe (2007). The Argentinean democratic imagery is antipolitical in a double sense: on one hand, democracy is reduced to its procedural principles, excluding social demands as antidemocratic; on the other hand, the distinction between opponents, friends and enemies is blur in a dangerous frontier dominated by a superficial concept of pluralism which is hegemonic. Two manifestations of this antipolitical imagery of what democracy is in contemporary Argentina are going to be treated as cases to immerse the reader in these reflections. Through these two cases it is possible to indicate the hegemonic place that has the idea of consensus in democracy, hegemony can put the existence of a radical democracy at risk. This hegemony pretends to erase something which is ineradicable in current societies: conflict. If conflict is simply ignored, there is no possibility to channel it by political means and authoritarian traces emerge in the communities. In the first place, we will analyze the concept of democracy theoretically as a place in which conflict has an inherent role. After that, we will argue the necessity of pluralism and its respective need of limits. The authors will propose that in Argentina, with the aim of imposing a totalizing idea of democracy, a post-political or antipolitical concept has turned hegemonic. This concept does not allow an understanding of the real and complex tensions in which the definition of democracy is the objective of a fight in the social and political arena. Two cases will be given in order to explain the problem: why the vindications of unemployed workers (the piqueteros) are seen as undemocratic, and how it is still possible, even today, to see groups supporting the last military coupe.