Alejandro Grimson
agrimson@unsam.edu.ar
Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina
Abstract:
This article advances the notion of hyperpresence to designate a phenomenon that the map-territory binary has systematically left aside from the political analysis, namely, the existence of objects, characters, and events condensing more significance and affective energy than any other equivalent representation, and which are interpreted by large swaths of population as direct presences rather than signs of something absent. Hyperpresence is not a cognitive bias or a social pathology, but an interpretive configuration, a way of experiencing reception and reading signs, individuals, and actions as presences. Our central hypothesis is that Europe and the Americas are witnessing a historic change in their mainstream hermeneutic configuration: from some representational configuration that makes a difference between map and territory, and processes political experience as mediated by symbol towards a hyperpresential configuration where semiotic distance shrinks or collapses, and where political figures, mediated events, and charismatic leaders are processed as direct presences rather than going through any other interpretive elaboration. Such a change was not produced by the far-right wing but discovered and quite skillfully capitalized by them.
Keywords: hyperpresence, social hermeneutics, cultural change, far-right wing, representation, emotional landscapes.
