Alejandro Grimson's work stands out for its critical analysis of the processes of identity construction and border dynamics in Latin America. An anthropologist and academic, Grimson has developed relevant research works that question essentialist notions of nation and culture. In The limits of culture (Grimson, 2011), the author proposes an understanding of the cultural from the processes of configurations as complex webs that articulate shared historical experiences, inequalities and processes of symbolic sedimentation. This concept, key for those of us who work from a sociocultural perspective, allows us to grasp how collective meanings and practices are constantly reconfigured in contexts of crisis and social transformation.

Grimson has been concerned with the ways in which the processes of exclusion, hegemony, xenophobia and identity are socially constructed. And perhaps in this sense, one of his most relevant contributions lies in his conception of the border as a dynamic and multifaceted space that transcends physical boundaries to become a condenser of sociocultural processes. For Grimson, borders are territories of interaction and conflict where state, identity and cultural dimensions converge and are in tension. In his perspective, these zones should not be understood only as peripheral borders of national states, but as places where power relations, identities and collective belongings are constantly negotiated. Borders thus become scenarios of agency, where local populations not only resist state impositions, but also actively participate in their re-signification.

Grimson highlights how these border spaces articulate historical experiences and symbolize both exclusion and connection by highlighting the contradictions of national projects. This approach challenges traditional narratives that present borders as mere dividing lines, and underscores their central role in the cultural configuration and historical experiences of nationalism in contemporary societies.

Among his most influential contributions are studies on the regimes of ethnic visibility and the dynamics of xenophobia in Argentina, which reflect the tensions between multiculturalism and exclusion in a nation that presents itself as homogeneous, and which is very suggestive for interrogating nationalist projects and their discourses as devices of political governmentality.

Last summer we had the opportunity and the pleasure to talk with Alejandro Grimson about his academic career since the nineties to date. This conversation was organized in three moments: first, as a reflection on the discussions in Latin America during the nineties; Alejandro deepens in the interview about the debate between postmodern theoretical positions and studies from post-Marxism that thought the sociocultural beyond the economic determination. Thus, the talk recovers editorial projects such as the magazine Causes and Chances (1994), in which various figures who supported the field of social sciences and humanities converged. But perhaps the most interesting thing is the mention of the intellectual commitment to intervene in political processes from the theoretical critique to think processes from the cultural-power-communication axis. The aim was to recover genealogies of thought and their discussions in order to raise new questions that would give an account of the Latin American intellectual baggage. This allowed the formation of complicities between academia, graduate students, disseminators and intellectuals during those years.

The talk highlights group projects (felafacs, clacso) in Latin America, who, since the late 1990s, have been thinking about the cultural crisis in the context of neoliberalism in order to, as he says, "build a new social and political imaginary for Latin America". One of the questionings present at that time, and still in force, had to do with the functioning of hegemonies, but now in a neoliberal key in democratic governments.

In a second moment, we invite Alejandro to reflect on The limits of culture (Prize lasa, 2010), 14 years after its writing, the questions that triggered that text and the reflective process and fieldwork that it opened in its trajectory, whose fundamental contributions we have already commented above. Finally, the conversation opened up a highly relevant contemporary issue that Grimson addresses: the rise to power of the new extreme right-wingers. In what way are nationalisms reactivated, no longer as a mere love of one's own, but instrumentalized as a repressive device? What configurations of sensibility are exacerbated and what do they respond to? What challenges do they pose for research, advocacy and political imagination?

The interview continues with a very powerful reflection on the various adaptations of the "demos" in different contexts, drawing on its sensitive historical sediments; the tensions between dogmatism and pragmatism, the popular and the non-popular, and the discussions between left and right. With the recognition that, at bottom, all these conservative expressions of the ultra-right aim at weakening democracy.

When we conducted the interview in the summer, the U.S. presidential election had not yet taken place and Javier Milei's administration had been in power for barely six months. We decided to take advantage of the end of the year with its latest events and the recent publication of Unhinged: the dizzying changes driven by the far right (Grimson, 2024), to add a postface in which Grimson shared the main axes of this collective publication: the strategy of the derangement as a device for capturing the public conversation; the crisis of representation and the enthronement of charismatic figures; the character of the extreme right and the exacerbation of an enervated emotionality; the new subjectivities crossed by the structural change of labor relations, the individualization of the subject as an entrepreneur of himself, as well as the saturation and commodification of the socio-digital space; and, finally, the urgency to build referents of political projects that allow us to launch a cable to land in front of the disorder and that allows us to touch the ground, to place other routes and other possible ones.

Bibliography

Grimson, Alejandro (2011). Los límites de la cultura: Crítica de las teorías de la identidad. Buenos Aires: Siglo xxi.

— (2024). Desquiciados. Los vertiginosos cambios que impulsa la derecha. Buenos Aires: Siglo xxi.

Alina Peña Iguarán is a research professor at the itesoJesuit University of Guadalajara, and is a member of the National System of Researchers, level i. D. from Boston University, she specialized in war, memory and subjectivity in the narrative of the Mexican Revolution. She did her postdoctoral research on art and border at El Colef in Tijuana entitled "Poéticas de las excedencias"; she is currently working on the tensions at the crossroads between aesthetic practices, politics and social action in contexts of violence, disappearance and migration. She is a member of the Hemispheric Encounters network and the Red Estudios Internacionales de la Mirada. Member of the working group Intemperie. She has recently published "Las políticas de la interpretación: pautas para abordar la relación entre estética, política y comunicación", in Mauricio Andión Gamboa and Dana Arrieta Barraza (coords.) (2024). The image and time. Looks at the thought of Diego Lizarazo. isbn 978-607-96224-5-9; with P. Azócar Donoso (2023). "Intemperie: políticas de la voluntad y poéticas del cobijo, Etcetera. Journal of the Social Sciences Area of the ciffandh (12); and also with P. Azócar Donoso (2024). "Inclemencia, cobijo y agenciamiento", ArteFactos. Mexico City: unam/cisanpp. 297-320.

Alexander Grimson D. in Anthropology (University of Brasilia). Principal investigator of the conicet. Full Professor of Anthropological Theory at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín. He was advisor to the President of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, from 2019 to 2022. In the same period he was responsible for prospective studies in the Argentina Futura Program, in the National Cabinet Office. He was dean of the Instituto de Altos Estudios Sociales of the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (2005-2014). President of the Doctoral College of the same university and director of the network. southern cone coves from 2017 to 2019. He has more than 20 books published on inequality, culture, social movements, politics, identities and Peronism. His book The limits of culture won the Best Iberoamerican Book Award for lasa (Latin American Studies Association). He was also awarded the Bernardo Houssay Prize as a researcher in social sciences in Argentina. His book will be published soon. The emotional landscapes of the massive extreme right. Do people vote against their interests?