translated from Spanish: Funados – The Counter

“La raffinatezza del libertinaggio’s quella di essere allo stesso tempo carnefice e vittima”.
Pier Paolo Pasolini – Sala o le 120 giornate di Sodoma
If there is one concept that has emerged vehemently in recent times and has experienced an obvious expansion since the so-called social outburst, it is that of “funa”. Various have been the scenarios and forms that this type of action has taken. From energetic cries and posters with messages of protest, to mechanisms of virtual denunciation on social networks, to the aggression with eggs, bottles, stones and all kinds of verbal and physical violence, have been observed everywhere. The star parliamentarian on the left, the academic of the university of the thousandth level, the candidate of the emerging conglomerate, the maximum figure of the Chilean far-right, the cheerleader of the most seen in the country, one of the most important leaders of the entrepreneurship, the president of the party of order, the minister of health, the minister of the interior, the President of the Republic himself: no one is saved from the festival of funa. A criminal proceeding, a hateful phrase, a “non-forced error”, an abusive relationship, an action at odds with morality; but also a statement taken of context, a reasonable error, a politically incorrect idea or even the mere exposition of a point of view; everything seems to be a valid and sufficient argument to carry out a funa, at least from the eyes of the one who exercises it.
But where does the very idea of the funa come from? The core of this term – of Mapuche origin – is given in the act of rotting or rotting (see the “Mapuche Dictionary” by Rafael Muñoz). This concept has acquired political vitality since the well-known funas held since the late 1990s by human rights organizations, which were usually intended to compensate for the lack of effective justice in matters of disappearance, torture, murder and other violations of fundamental rights perpetrated in the military dictatorship, through a public act of social and moral condemnation. As is noted in the funa commission (see http://comisionfuna.org/): if there is no funa justice! In these cases, the obvious lack of justice (marked by a formal system still negligent in the persecution of such crimes) opened the door to understand and legitimize such acts of symbolization and exposure of grievance as such. The funa was typical of a society in which all progress was excessively slow, as far as possible – as the former leader of the transition said. This was, then, a form of citizen confrontation against factual power.
However, with the advent of social networks and, in particular, with the expansion observed since October 18, the use of funa as a resource has diversified, sometimes acquiring fairly different edges than its origin. Waiting for justice to start moving and put things in place is now an almost utopian act, whether it’s the lack of response from the judiciary, the lack of patience of the affected, or both. Since its earliest and constant use in cases of sexual abuse, animal abuse, corruption in the broad sense, among others, the funa has allowed to denounce and make available matters that do not find a satisfactory response in the formal system of justice, beyond the qualms that may arise from its very nature. However, in the context of the current political discussion, the funa has become a concurrent act of denunciation and public condemnation for some, ignoring any unbiased attempt to examine the relevant justifications and what the taxable person has to say about it. This way of understanding the funa, by dispensing with certain basic budgets and extreme the means by which it is imposed, seems to have less to do with the compensatory spirit observed in the late 1990s and more with mere public denia, which sometimes becomes a mere exercise of intolerance in the face of divergent thinking.
On the other hand, even though the funa has an intrinsic equality component (anyone can defy and anyone can be funated), this initial value is lost when the monopoly of the word and action is exclusively held by the active subject of the funa. In this way, the unilaterality of the measure and the failure to observe the principles of due process – characteristic of the manifestations of self-guardianship – makes the funa an effective and efficient mechanism, but not always just. Hence this has also been lent itself to vehiculating obviously intolerant and “Trumpian” proposals, in which the reason for that act stands merely in personal opinion, returning to the alleged victim as a victim. In the purest spirit of the postmodern present: Everything can be formulable without any need to substantiate.
From what has been pointed out, it is worth thinking about such acts in the political context, their scope, foundation and proportionality, especially now that political-social discussion is beginning to take on enormous relevance in matters. It is therefore necessary to re-signify funa in this area, based on the idea of legitimate citizen confrontation against factual power, based on critical thinking and the need to find democratic mechanisms that are capable of responding to the rhythm of social needs.
In the midst of youth, a 19th-century thinker argued that peer-to-peer political discussion could have the particularity of replacing the power of fact (a-discursive) with the power of argument and reason. Hence, the need to claim a new form of funa – at least for the political scenario – emerges, where the argumentative and defiant spirit compalone (or sublime if you will) the simple intolerant push against who thinks differently. This, by the way, does not mean giving up tension and dissent. It is clear that the policy of consensus-based consensus has shown its profound failure. Rather, it is a question of putting the discursive arguments and capacities at stake, in the light of enriching the discussion – especially given what the future holds in constitutional matters. The same aforementioned thinker sumoriginally sumoriginally sucmended this idea for today. He argued that “democracy is the revealed conunction of all constitutions.” Thus, the call is then to deepen the democratic exercise from the citizenry, radically opening up the discussion of ideas and thus generating the instances for it.

The content poured into this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.

Original source in Spanish

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