Suffering and Identification under Neoliberalism: the new middle class and the rise of right-wing populism in Brazil

Abstract

The article advances a psychoanalytic (re)description of suffering under neoliberalism, specifically that caused by the change in class position in Brazil in the period from 2007 to 2014 amongst the "new middle class" or the "Brazilian battlers". The authors show the existence of mismatches, in terms of social grammars of recognition, in the process of subjectivation of this new social position. Such gaps gave rise to four types of suffering, related to gender exploitation; the precariousness of work and its orientation towards consumption; generational conflict and the aesthetic care for the body. Sufferings that culminated in the participation of many in the "conservative turn" of the 2018 presidential elections.