Resumo

CUESTA, Micaela  e  PRESTIFILIPPO, Agustín Lucas. Rhetorics of cruelty: Myths of and reasons for social inequality. Rev. Pilquen. secc. cienc. soc. [online]. 2021, vol.24, n.4, pp.47-60. ISSN 1851-3123.

How do subjects act in the presence of discourses that interpret the structure and causes of the crisis that the pandemic exposes? In this paper we are devoted to the analysis of some oral narratives extracted from a qualitative study of argentinean society in which subjects thread hypotheses of interpretation about issues of not only public significance but also related to intimacy, thus expressing an affectively overdetermined verbality, in which emotions and sensitivities act as vehicles of positions contrary to the principles of freedom and equality for all. The hypothesis we develop here argues that, in the face of the global crisis of capitalism, unleashed first by the financial collapse of 2008 and then exacerbated by the Covid-19 catastrophe, individuals do not cease in their quest to construct a sense of the facts as they occur. And for this purpose they use different rhetorical strategies that denote forms of attachment; which, many times, obstruct the critical view and the possibility of transforming the conditions that produce their suffering. In these operations of the use of words, ways of justifying privileges, exclusions and social oppressions are expressed, and in doing so they jeopardize the fundamental conditions of democratic life.

Palavras-chave : Social Myths; Inequalities; Cruelty; Anti-democratic Ideologies; Crisis.