Overview

We lived in a time when the consensus on which our few certainties rested became traumatic, "When we had the answers, the questions changed" says the Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti. It is as if, paraphrasing Slavoj Zizek, the reality had become paranoid and suspected all of us. Security, which under the rule of law is a prerogative of citizens before the arbitrariness of the State, has turned paranoia into a State prerogative to defend itself against citizens, the suspects.

But let's look at the suspects, the dangerous criminals State has to defend itself against, the threatening Black Block that has passed anti-terrorist laws all around the world. Citizens claiming rights, citizens claiming rights that are recognized by the constitutions of their respective Rules of Law, appealing to politicians who were elected in free elections, at least on paper, and who are their democratically elected representatives. The elderly, retired, who have mortgaged their homes to the banks or endorsed those of their children and grandchildren, families, children sent away from their homes by Police Tactical Units. Why does this happen if, in the rule of law, security is the basis, the first of political freedoms (Rosseau, Montesquieu), perchance a State that calls itself Democratic and of Law does not have to be a limit to the arbitrariness of the State any more than a form of state itself?

This seminar brings the current State of the Art of the process of democratic emptying in a comparative Europe-Latin America perspective with academics on both sides of the Atlantic from the techno-political approaches of social movements that have taken place since 2011.

Intervenions: José Manuel Mendes, Ana Raquel Matos e Sérgio Barbosa (CES), Charlotth Back (UPO), Augusto Jobim do Amaral (PPGCCrim) and Fernanda Martins (UNIVALI) | Moderators: José Candón (U. Sevilha)  and Jesús Sabariego (CES)
 

Organisers: FEUC, CES, Universidade de Sevilla, COMPOLÍTICAS, Instituto Joaquín Herrera Flores para América Latina and CLACSO