At the heart of the retrograde storm: the dispute over globalization

Abstract

The author represents the historical present as a phase of systolic contraction within civilizational cycles of approximately forty years, also applicable to the development of scientific knowledge. Thus, the current situation¾marked by the rise of authoritarian leadership and an ultraconservative drift¾ is understood as a «retrograde tide» that reaches its critical point on the horizon of the idea of globalization. This idea has been fetishized and therefore reduced to a neoliberal economic category, obscuring its ontological and dialectical character. This synecdoche, consolidated after the fall of the socialist bloc and the «Washington Consensus» has served both to justify deregulated market policies and to fuel contradictory ideological expectations. At the same time, it generates conceptual fallacies and blocks a critical understanding of the present.

Consequently, the philosophical analysis of globalization as an idea, subject to tensions, territorial resistance, and internal contradictions, is advocated. In any case, no historical cycle is imposed completely, so there are possibilities for resistance and transformation.