From the election to the fall: memories and narratives of an impeachment

Abstract

Narratives and memories belong to the writing of history and, as well as making it possible to
understand it, they also allow us to understand moments of crisis in the historical path as a whole.
From this perspective, this study, using the hypothetical-deductive approach and the technique of
bibliographic research, seeks to understand how the narrative based on the impeachment of President
Dilma Rousseff reveals crises and historical turns, as well as how memory, politics and law are closely
linked to the constructions of memory and the narrative itself. To this end, news from three online
periodicals – G1, Agência da Câmara, and Agência Pública – between the months of December
2015 and August 2016 were used as research sources. In terms of methodological references, the
third generation of the Annales School was followed, especially in the stage that comprises the
fragmentation and expansion of historiography to the reading public, usually called New History or
Cultural History. Nevertheless, to make sense of this analysis, we used Walter Benjamin’s theoretical
basis and concept, involving the relationship between narrative as experience, and Jack M. Balkin’s
construction of the concept of constitutional crisis and constitutional decline and, finally, how to
establish it in the constructions of the demands for reparation, recognition and political transformation
in the scope of transitions, demonstrated in the lessons of some authors who approach the theme, such
as, for example, Armin von Bogdandy and Renáta Uitz.