Democratic construction, neo-liberalism and participation: the dilemmas of perverse confluence

Abstract

This text explores the configuration of a discursive crisis that seems to pervade the contemporary experiences of democratic construction in Brazil and Latin America. The said discursive crisis results in a perverse confluence between, on one hand, the neo-liberal project established along the last fifteen years and, on the other hand, a democratizing, participatory project that emerges from the resistance to the authoritarian regime and the struggle for the deepening of democracy. It focuses on the apparent characteristics of the crisis within the Brazilian context, marked by the political-cultural dispute between the two projects and by a displacement of meanings produced with respect to three notions – civil society, participation and citizenship – that constitute the central references for the understanding of that confluence. Finally, it discusses, in a very preliminary way, the implications of this process of re-signification for the representations of politics and democracy, and the possibilities of facing that crisis. Key-words: democracy, participation, citizenship.