Catarina Kinnvall, ISPP President, Lund University, Sweden: Grievances as Loss: Ontological insecurity, postcolonial melancholia, and masculinism 

This presentation will address the particular narratives and discourses that respond to increased feelings of uncertainty, anxiety and fear, so called ‘ontological insecurities’, and their connections to postcolonial imaginaries of increasingly authoritarian polities. I discuss how such narratives and discourses are emotionally governed and psychoanalytically resonant in their focus on imaginary pasts and futures and how they are accelerated by the ubiquity of hybrid media that have allowed for increasingly populist authoritarian forces to efficiently spread their emotional messages. In the presentation I spell out how specific grievances and attachments are being rethought, re-justified and reimagined through postcolonial pasts and practices, and how narratives of ‘trauma’, ‘nationhood’ and ‘masculinism’ explain the desires, violence and ruptures involved in postcolonial bordering and gendered subject formation. In addition, I discuss how, and to what extent, resistance is possible.

Elizabeth Lira, Alberto Hurtado University, Chile: Reparation and Recognition of victims of human rights violations 

The year 2023 marked the 50th anniversary of the military coup in Chile that led to a 17-year dictatorship characterized by human rights violations. The violence resulted in thousands of victims, prisoners and tortured, victims of forced disappearance and extrajudicial executions. The talk will be a reflection on the process of recognition and reparation of the victims and their families as part of the policies of the transition from dictatorship to democratic government through the establishment of truth, justice, and memory, which today constitute transdisciplinary fields of research, professional practices, and political action. 

Agustín Espinosa, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú: Democratic Weakening from Citizen Decision-Making: Political Moral Laxity as a Consequence of Perverse Political Socialization

Political structures and dynamics characterized by a high prevalence of structural violence, corruption and systemic malfunctioning, as in the case of some Latin American societies, seem to produce in citizens reasonings such as “all politicians are the same so it is acceptable to vote for a candidate who steals, but do the work” or “it is right to vote for those politicians we consider as the ‘lesser evil'”. The above shows that the political systems to which we are exposed act as socializing forces with a potential impact on how we will position ourselves before the public, the collective, the private and the individual as dimensions of the political. Types of reasoning such as those mentioned previously have been systematized and have allowed the coining of the concept of Political Moral Laxity, which comprises “a set of beliefs and political attitudes of citizens who tolerate, and even favor, dishonest, transgressive and corrupt actions carried out by politicians and authorities”. Although these actions could individually or collectively benefit those who accept them, they can cause harm or damage to other citizens and society in general, establishing tensions between the private and the public, where the latter is constantly left aside. This presentation will emphasize the social conditions in which Political Moral Laxity occurs and gains strength, as well as, the potential consequences it has for democracy.