Os silêncios da austeridade e dos protestos e as exclusões abissais em Portugal

Abstract

A decade after the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Portuguese government and the Troika, this article addresses democracy through the identification of discursive silences. Using the conceptual framework of the Epistemologies of the South to analyze the European context, it is argued that it is necessary to recognize the abyssal lines that separate the strange civil society from the uncivil civil society. A sociology of absences is produced in three phases. Therefore, in the first part of this article, it is shown that austerity, more than a break in the European normality – as it was presented – was a policy of continuity, which reified hierarchies between countries and people. In the second part, I address the silences of official speeches from the perspective of the anti-austerity protests that took place between 2011 and 2013. Finally, I analyze the silences of the protests from the perspective of Roma activists.

Keywords

• neoliberalism
• democracy
• epistemologies of the South
• Roma activism
• sociology of absences