Peronism Is a Sentiment

Abstract

Throughout its seven-decade history, Peronism’s supporters have described Peronism as a sentiment, paraphrasing Evita Perón, who famously declared that Peronism “cannot be learned,” but rather “intuited” and “understood.” This chapter examines what it means to call a political ideology a “sentiment” to elucidate how populist ideology, and political ideology, more generally, are intrinsically affective. In this chapter, I analyze Peronist iconography, ritual, and its ineffable “mystique” (mísitica) to foreground the affective contours of populist politics more generally, arguing that Peronist sentiment resembles what Raymond Williams called a “structure of feeling”—the ineffable elements of ideology that mobilize our dispositions and perceptions. In doing so, I contribute to one of the central motivations of this volume—to elucidate the liminal aspects of political identity, participation, and transition by understanding ideology as a process of signification. This chapter attends to this conception of ideology through analysis centered on political agents, in this case, avid supporters of Peronism, whose appeal to icons and ritual foregrounds the relationship between sentiment, affect, dispositions, and ideology. Through poignant ethnographic scenes of Peronist sentiment and action, I foreground the primacy of affect in Peronism’s political praxes, pushing readers to consider the intrinsically affective nature of populist politics and political ideology, more generally.