The State Crisis in Argentina: Global Fantasies and National Containment

This dissertation examines the neoliberal reform implemented by Carlos Menem's government in Argentina (1989-1999) in relation to the "organic state crisis" of the mid 1970s and the political and economic crisis of 1989. I contend that the neoliberal reform aimed at fully adjusting the nation-state's economic structures to Northern capital, continuing a trend that started in the late 1950s. The adaptation of the nation-state to Northern capital eroded the hegemony of the state as the institution that protected the nation, as I show, periodically pressuring the ruling class to establish new state modes of regulation and strategies of national containment for controlling the constant conflicts between workers and capital, and between citizens and the state: repressive nationalism, democratic reformism and market populism. Focusing on the conjuncture of the 1990s, I examine how those practices operate in a variety of spheres, including political representation, the culture industry, trade union politics and economic policy. I argue that there are three essential political tools with which the ruling class controls workers and citizens: the state absorption of capitalist crises, the production of a libidinal economy based on the First World fantasy and the re-elaboration of populist politics. In the last chapter, I return to the issue of the "organic state crisis" by examining the civic, political and economic convulsions of 2001-2002. I conclude that the tendency toward state repression is inherent to the contemporary nation-state's adjustment to Northern capital.