Spanish political life has undergone important transformations in the last decade. A rare way of approaching them is through the changes that have taken place in public opinion. This paper draws attention to a new generation of intellectuals who, in the middle of the last decade, burst into the public sphere with the task of shoring up the inherited institutional order, which was then beginning to be strongly questioned. These young people saw themselves as the bulwarks of a modernisation of public opinion, as the introducers of scientifically informed models of analysis. Initially aligned with the Ciudadanos project, they have managed to survive the party's volatility and have gradually reconfigured their positions on the political scene. In this article we are particularly interested in those who have repositioned themselves on the right-wing spectrum and in how events, especially the crisis of 2017, have pushed them towards positions that have rectified the institutional order they came to defend.
In this article, I argue that the norms governing argumentative exchanges-such as norms of adversariality and politeness-and their interaction with factors like the speaker's social identity can give rise to situations of discursive injustice, in which the illocutionary force of the act of arguing is distorted by the interlocutor. I further contend that when such injustices affect speech acts of arguing, the harm inflicted on the speaker is particularly insidious, as it limits her ability to use argumentation as a legitimate and necessary resource in situations where backing up and validating other speech acts is required. Finally, I argue that this phenomenon not only undermines the speaker's capacity to argue, but in extreme cases may reinforce broader dynamics of exclusion, leading to her silencing and even to the loss of the very perception of the possibility of arguing.
In this paper we characterize some of the functions that narrative arguments play in the argumentation of populist political discourses and offer tools for their weighting. First, we demonstrate with an example that these arguments are part of the discursive procedures through which populist discourse constructs "the people". We suggest that the construction of "the people" and the introduction of an alien goal to the collective subjects grouped in this construction can be accomplished through a narrative argument that appeals to historical narratives. Then, we raise the question of how to weigh the narrative arguments of populism when they are opposed by others that appeal to a narrative of narrower range that justifies the particular demands of the collective subjects. We suggest some questions that may make it easier for citizens to weigh these arguments by virtue of their own identity, that is, their adherence to certain discourses.
The main aim of this article is to deepen and attempt to elucidate some aspects related to the definition of bullshit. Our starting point will be the definition provided by the American philosopher Harry Frankfurt, which is considered the first systematic clarification of the term. Therefore, in the first place, we will analyze the four main characteristics established by Frankfurt: indifference toward the truth, indifference toward the audience's beliefs, intention to deceive and incompatibility with lying. Then we will present the arguments suggested by different authors to problematize this original definition. We will also pay attention to the theories developed by some of these authors who, moreover, have proposed other types of bullshit. Finally, we will defend Tobies Grimaltos and Sergi Rosell's proposal, in which bullshit is defined as indifference to the Gricean maxims of conversation, since we believe it can shed light on such a complex and varied phenomenon as bullshit.
This article analyses the crisis of democracy and the rise of new political extremisms based on the concept of "post-democracy" developed by Colin Crouch and articulated by Roberto Esposito. It looks specifically at the case of Venezuela, where democratic erosion led to a chavista-madurista autocracy. It explores how in Venezuela there was a "democratic fatigue" brought about by post-democracy and neoliberalism, which eroded the weak political institutions inherited fromthe Spanish colony. They had an imperial exploitation logic inherited from the Roman Empire and did not respond to local needs. Faced with empty institutions, the "messianic" option of chavismo emerged, which, with a Manichean discourse of popular rebellion and a caudillista leader, promised the historic redemption of the oppressed. Thus, the Venezuelan post-democracy transited from democratic exhaustion to authoritarianism. It is concluded that the weak foundation of Venezuelan institutions, their social inadequacy and consequent delegitimisation were a breeding ground for the emergence of redemptive extremisms such as chavismo, within the framework of neoliberal post-democracy.
