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Accepted Paper
Dogs, birds and other mythical beings in South American political discourses: new animism in belief narratives
Maria Palleiro
(Buenos Aires Universitu)
This paper analyses how South American leaders like Nicolás Maduro and Javier Milei use belief narratives dealing with animal mythical beings in political discourses. Despite opposing ideologies, both draw on animistic and zoomorphic imaginaries to foster voter identification in their campaigns.
Paper long abstract
This presentation relates to a previous one, dealing with “Speaking birds and cosmic kites: mythical beings in South American political discourse” (Palleiro 2023). Taking into account that t the term “political folklore” can be used as an umbrella concept which emerges from the political process, including both beliefs and vernacular narratives, related to political events (Astapova 2015), and that the concept of “vernacular posthumanisms “ can be considered as an ontological category dealing with the slippery slope between “human” and “animal” (Thompson 2019), the aim is to analyse the use of belief narratives dealing with animal beings as argumentative resources in the discourse of South American political leaders such as the Venezuelan Nicolás Maduro the Argentinian president Javier Milei. Although supporting different political ideologies, both of them draw on animistic mythical discourse dealing with animals to sustain election campaigns. The hypothesis is that South American political leaders resort to an animistic social imaginary anchored in zoomorphic representations of supernatural forces, such as "the forces of Heaven," cited in repeated speeches by Argentinian President Javier Milei, to foster mechanisms of identification among their potential voters.