Fantasies, myths and ideological beliefs in the times of Macri

Abstract

This paper investigates the hegemonic operation of Cambiemos, focusing on the analysis of the social imaginaries staged by the Macrist discourse in the public sphere during the 2015 presidential campaign and in his government period (2015-2019). Through analytical tools of Political Theory of Discourse, it examines the fantasies, myths and ideological beliefs spread by macrist discourse and its rhetorical uses to try to legitimize its neoliberal public policies and build a successful common sense in Argentina. In the second part, it analyzes the superego mandates of Macri´s discourse and the theft of jouissance. The article argues that the Macrist discourse redefined a series of myths and beliefs based on a neoliberal matrix (the Myth of the Spill linked to the growth of the countryside, and the myth of the State as homologous to a private enterprise) to try to build a new hegemony. These myths were linked to a consensualist and objectivist fantasy, based on a technocratic-engineering management of the State, and an evolutionary fantasy of progressive and gradual economic improvement, focused on the significant Change. The symptomatic reverse of the ideological fantasy was phenomenologically expressed through the demonization and stigmatization of otherness in the execrable figure of Kirchnerism, guilty of all the country´s ills.

Keywords: Government of Cambiemos; Neoliberalism; Construction of hegemony; Myths and ideological fantasies; Analysis of Political discourse.