THE DISGUST FACTOR. Symbolic Trashing and Authoritarian Discourse in Contemporary Peru

This research focuses on four authoritarian discourses: the discourse of dirty war and the justification of excesses; the discourse of creole morality and ethical ambiguity in Vladimiro Montesinos's corruption network; sexism and crimes against women in the context of the internal war; and, finally, the discourse of "dirty feminism" and the invention of the "tele-poor." These four discourses allow, through symbolic trashification, for people to be regarded as waste or surplus of the system. At the same time, the four discourses are complementary: sexism against women in the context of internal violence is part of the dirty war; likewise, the trashification of the poor in a crude and raw representation of them, the "tele-poor," is the supplementary version for the popular classes of the discourses that flowed in the corruption chamber attended by Vladimiro Montesinos. The first allowed for a public staging of vile individuals; the second proposed the same, in a more sophisticated way, for a private scene of the corruptor.