Building on dust and bricks: An analysis of neoliberal representations and discourse in Argentina during the Macri era (2015-2019)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the representation of dictatorial memory in the management speech of Mauricio Macri during the period 2015 to 2019. The aim was to identify the different ways in which this dictatorial memory is made present and the senses it contains. In this way, we start from the premise that this memory functioned as a regulator of the construction of speech objects such as 'inner enemy'. The purpose of this exhibition is to count the presence of the in coexistence with the conservative. This work sits at that presence in a thematic strip assiduously addressed by this enunciation, and the different ways in which it is presented in this report. The government of macrista starts a process of deepening in the country of prototypical reforms of neoliberalism, which were already being applied in much of Latin America: redistribution of wealth in favour of concentrated transnational capital, labour flexibility, financial and welfare reform, etc. This involved the reduction of rights of all kinds, the increase of unemployment, the increase of economic and social inequality -wage reductions and accompanied by the increase in poverty. As Morresi (2016) and Vicente y Morresi (2019) point out, the reforms undertaken meant a redesign, a (re)engineering of the State and society, at the service of the maximum commercialization of objects, actors and spaces, which implied a qualitative leap in the deepening spiral of the neo-liberal model in Argentina.

Methodologically, we work in a mixed way and take diverse and random statements of different moments of the management. We use non-participant observation and first- and second-hand sources. Among the collected data, we observe the dictatorial memory that emerges from the discursive as the protocol of action, and in the configuration of speech objects, we have highlighted the 'public order' and the 'inner enemy'. In the analysis we can show the presence of dictatorial discursive memory in the representative discourse of the government management of Mauricio Macri. To conclude, through the recent historical perspective of this discursive construction, we were able to investigate and increase the interpretation of its glotopolitical value. The theme configures that the enunciative identity between the macrista and dictatorial discourse founded by this memory has aimed to sustain limiting dynamics for citizens' rights.