Pandemic, anti-feminism, and austerity: A brief genealogy of a counterrevolution

Abstract

In this text, I seek to trace a brief genealogy to account for the electoral triumph of the far right in Argentina. I connect the effects generated by the pandemic, the austerity imposed by inflation, and the ways in which a massive feminist movement in the streets was responded to. I propose to analyze how the terrain of social reproduction, highly politicized by popular and feminist struggles over the last two decades, has been a key location for the development of the far right’s campaign, mobilizing meanings around authority as self-discipline and anti-feminism as a compensatory explanation for inequalities. In turn, I focus on different moments and functions of household debt as a way of understanding the subjective mutations that modulate financial devices at the level of the everyday economy and their exploitation by the far right.