Liberal democracy is undergoing a crisis that cannot be understood apart from the expansion of conservative, reactionary, and authoritarian movements across the Global North and South. This is not merely a political process straining institutions but also a cultural and discursive phenomenon reshaping how societies relate to their past. The growth of these radical forces has turned memory into a privileged terrain of contestation, where the limits of what can be said, represented, and deemed legitimate in the public sphere are constantly renegotiated. In this context, the radical right has questioned, appropriated, and destabilized the memory paradigm that dominated Western societies in recent decades. With national and regional variations, this paradigm had been consolidated around the imperative to remember human rights violations and to articulate collective narratives sustaining a minimal consensus on democratic values. The resurgence of authoritarian right wing movements threatens these symbolic achievements by advancing alternative, revisionist, or denialist memories that trivialize past violence and seek to legitimize human rights violations in the present. While these experiences share traits such as disinformation strategies, simplified historical narratives, and appeals to polarizing emotions, they retain specificities rooted in local trajectories. In Europe, for instance, debates over the legacy of the Holocaust and Nazi crimes have become sites of tension amid nationalist narratives seeking to relativize historical responsibility. In Latin America, the dispute centers on the memory of military dictatorships and the role of human rights struggles in building democracy. Yet in both contexts the outcome is similar: fragmented social memories and growing difficulty in sustaining coherent collective narratives. Various theoretical approaches have analyzed these dynamics, linking them to populism, the resurgence of denialism, and political polarization. Our panel situates itself within this horizon seeking to foster a North–South dialogue to reflect on both the convergences and divergences of these experiences.
La democracia liberal atraviesa hoy una crisis que no puede pensarse al margen de la expansión de movimientos conservadores, reaccionarios y autoritarios, presentes tanto en el Norte como en el Sur global. No se trata solo de un proceso político que tensiona las instituciones, sino también de un fenómeno cultural y discursivo que reconfigura los modos en que las sociedades se relacionan con su pasado. En efecto, el crecimiento de estas fuerzas radicales ha convertido a la memoria en un terreno de disputa privilegiado, donde se definen los límites de lo decible, lo representable y lo legítimo en el espacio público.
En este movimiento, las extremas derechas han sabido cuestionar, reapropiarse y desestabilizar el paradigma de la memoria que dominó en Occidente durante las últimas décadas. Un paradigma que, con matices nacionales y regionales, se había consolidado en torno al mandato de recordar las violaciones a los derechos humanos y de articular narrativas colectivas capaces de sostener un consenso mínimo en torno a los valores democráticos. El resurgimiento de las derechas autoritarias ha puesto en jaque estas conquistas simbólicas, proponiendo memorias alternativas, negacionistas o revisionistas, que no solo banalizan la violencia del pasado, sino que también buscan legitimar violaciones a los derechos humanos en el presente.
Aunque estas experiencias comparten ciertos rasgos comunes -como el uso de estrategias de desinformación, la simplificación de los relatos históricos o la apelación a emociones que polarizan-, mantienen especificidades vinculadas a sus trayectorias locales.En Europa, por ejemplo, el debate sobre el legado del Holocausto y los crímenes del nazismo ha sido un terreno de tensión frente a narrativas nacionalistas que buscan relativizar responsabilidades históricas. En América Latina, en cambio, la disputa se centra en la memoria de las dictaduras militares y en el lugar de las luchas por los derechos humanos en la construcción de la democracia. Sin embargo, en ambos casos, el resultado es similar: la proliferación de memorias sociales fragmentadas y la dificultad creciente para sostener relatos colectivos articulados.
Este panorama plantea desafíos urgentes. Por un lado, mantener vivo el recuerdo de las violaciones a los derechos humanos en contextos donde el negacionismo gana terreno. Por otro, repensar cómo fortalecer una memoria cosmopolita que no quede atrapada en los marcos nacionales, sino que dialogue con experiencias compartidas a nivel global. Y, al mismo tiempo, comprender las formas de subjetividad política que emergen de estas disputas, así como las nuevas configuraciones de ciudadanía que habilitan o clausuran.
Diversos enfoques teóricos han contribuido a analizar estos fenómenos, vinculándolos al populismo, al resurgimiento de los negacionismos y a las dinámicas de polarización política. Nuestro panel se inscribe en ese horizonte y busca generar un diálogo Norte–Sur que permita reflexionar sobre las convergencias y divergencias de estas experiencias.
Mercedes Barros, CONICET/ Universidad Nacional de Rio Negro "Memory, politics, and contestation: the libertarian right and the kirchnerist Legacy"
This paper examines how Argentina’s libertarian right has capitalized on and radicalized one of the most decisive political antagonisms of the past two decades: the Kirchnerism anti Kirchnerism divide. Far from being merely circumstantial, this political articulation is rooted in a fertile discursive constellation, nourished both by the historical peronism–anti peronism cleavage and by more recent disputes emerging after the 2001 2002 crisis and the early twenty first century transformations. The analysis focuses on one of the most contested arenas in which this intervention takes place: the dispute over memories of state terrorism and the last civil military dictatorship. The libertarian right advances a memorial offensive that extends beyond simple denial or historical revisionism. Its aim is to close the openings produced by the Kirchnerist experience and its distinctive mode of intervening in human rights and memory politics. This force situates its memory interventions within a long term cultural battle, actively disrupting the discursive constellation that sustains democratic memories of the dictatorship. It produces new resignifications such as “Never Again to Kirchnerism” or “the single demon theory” , while reactivating familiar ones, including “complete memory,” “it wasn’t 30,000,” or “the human rights scam.” Though dispersed and sometimes uneven, this memorial offensive effectively broadens the margins of what can be said and heard about the 1970s, coinciding with a progressive erosion of memory and reparation policies, including defunded programs, closed offices, and dismissed personnel. This paper argues that this offensive does more than rewrite the past: it seeks to seal the openings created by the Kirchnerist intervention in human rights and memory.
Berber Bevernage, Ghent University "Politics of Memory and Populist Historical Reason on the French Far Right: The Case of Éric Zemmour and Reconquête".
This paper examines how far right movements instrumentalize memory and history, or more broadly ‘past presencing' to construct what I call populist historical reason. Drawing on Ernesto Laclau’s theory of populism and expanding on a framework developed in Claiming the People’s Past, I argue that the far right’s memory practices—though seemingly fragmented—form a coherent political logic. They feed on the democratic culture of remembrance that emerged around human rights and the Holocaust, while simultaneously undermining its pluralist and self critical ethos. Understanding this logic is crucial for devising strategies to counter it. To demonstrate this, I analyze the case of French media pundit and politician Éric Zemmour and his party Reconquête (‘reconquest’). Zemmour’s politics are deeply anchored in revisionist memory work that spans from antiquity to the Second World War—most infamously his claim that Marshal Pétain “saved” French Jews by sacrificing foreign ones, a statement that led to a criminal conviction in 2025. Through books, television appearances, and social media, Zemmour turns the past into a battlefield where history is twisted, weaponized, and made emotionally resonant. Zemmour’s past presencing performs three interrelated functions central to populist historical reason. First, it is used to construct an ‘antagonistic frontier’ between the ‘authentic people’ and internal or external enemies. Second, it reactivates powerful historical empty signifiers that aim to unify disparate popular grievances into what Laclau calls ‘chains of equivalence’. Third, it establishes an aspirational horizon: Zemmour’s past presencing evokes a sense of “mythical fullness” against which the present appears incomplete or deficient. The paper concludes by reflecting on the challenges Zemmour’s memory politics pose for scholars and for sustaining democratic cultures of remembrance.
Sol Montero, CONICET/ Universidad de San Martín - "Naming the Past, Disputing the Present: Battles Over Naming the Argentine Military Dictatorship, Fifty Years Later".
Memory has a denominative dimension: in order to remember, one must name, and it is through this naming that past events are framed and interpreted. Names mobilize and crystallize representations that shape grand, collective narratives (Kalifa 2020). From this perspective, naming is a political act.
This presentation examines a set of discursive formulations that circulate in the press and political discourse and serve as designations for the last Argentinian military dictatorship. Examples include Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (National Reorganisation Process), Guerra Sucia (Dirty War), Terrorismo de Estado (State Terrorism), Dictadura Cívico-Militar (Civic-Military Dictatorship), Tragedia de los 70 (Tragedy of the 1970s), Años de Plomo and Interrupción Democrática (Democratic Interruption) extending even to its denial or silencing through naming. As denominations serve to frame events in discursive memory and tend to present enunciations as referring to unquestionable, ahistorical evidence, this study seeks to systematize the mechanisms through which the recent past has been thematised in the Argentine public sphere, as well as the argumentative repertoires that sustain these designations and the controversies in which they are embedded (Krieg 2003; Véniard 2007; Calabrese 2013; Smith 2021).
Our focus is on how this historical “event” is named. To achieve this, we will analyze the denominative paradigms coined by different political actors and sectors over the decades and consider canonical documents that have stabilized certain meanings around the dictatorship. At the same time, we aim to demonstrate how, by establishing frameworks and interpretations of the past, political discourse proposes a perspective about the present, particularly regarding the relationship between authoritarism and democracy.
20260729T110020260729T1230America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires1.10. Democracies on the Line: Memory Battles and Far-Right Challenges across the Global North and South I [ES]SV203MSA Buenos Aires 2026buenosairesconference@memorystudiesassociation.org
