The election of José Antonio Kast may mark a generational and ideological turn in Chilean politics, but not necessarily a structural one. From the outset, Kast has emphasized a moral register, as he appeals to hope, civic virtue, and exemplary behavior. Citizens are urged to respect public order, and restore social discipline through individual conduct. The message is clear: Chile’s crisis is framed less as a structural failure than as a cultural deviation.

From a Spinozist perspective, elected president Kast’s discourse of hope would be read as a political management of affects as citizens are invited to hope in order, discipline, and exemplary behavior. This hope reduces immediate fear and anger. But it does not increase people’s potentia agendi (capacity to act collectively). For Spinoza, this is decisive.

For Negri, the 2019 uprising was an eruption of constituent power — the living, productive force of society exceeding its institutional forms. The failure of constitutional reform and the return of elite governance represent not the exhaustion of that power, but its capture and deferral. Kast’s presidency, in Negri’s eyes, would be a classic case of constituent power neutralized by command

A state is stable not when it commands obedience, but when it increases the collective power of the multitude. Moral exhortation does the opposite: it individualizes responsibility and converts structural contradictions into ethical shortcomings.

If we read the Chile–Peru contrast through Derrida’s différance1, the diagnosis becomes even sharper, and it actually deepens what Spinoza and Negri were circling from another angle.

Différance at work: Chile and Peru revisited

For Derrida, différance is not simply “difference.” It is the simultaneous process of differentiation and deferral, where meaning, order, and identity never fully present themselves; they are always postponed, displaced, and produced through traces.

Applied politically, différance describes how order is never complete, how authority is always deferred, and how social meaning is constantly re-written.

Chile: The denial of Différance

Chile’s current strategy attempts to close différance.

  • Moral discourse (“exemplary behavior,” rejection of graffiti) seeks to stabilize meaning: what is order, what is disorder, who belongs, who deviates.
  • Security governance tries to fix presence: authority must be visible, discipline must be immediate, normality must be restored.

This is a metaphysics of presence applied to politics.

But because society is already fractured, this closure fails. What is deferred does not disappear; it returns as rupture. When différance is denied, it reappears as shock, protest, or uprising.

Chile’s first uprising (2019) was precisely the return of what had been deferred for decades, which are inequality, territorial exclusion, and non-represented life. The current administration repeats the same gesture by trying to seal meaning again.

Thus the risk of a second uprising persists.

Peru: living with Différance

Peru, by contrast, never fully closed différance.

  • Representation is always partial.
  • Authority is always deferred.
  • Institutions never fully coincide with social life.

This is often described as dysfunction. But through a Derridean lens, it is a mode of survival.

Peruvian politics does not pretend to full presence. Power is dispersed, meanings are unstable, legality is porous, and informality operates as a trace that both undermines and sustains order.

Crisis does not erupt as rupture because it is never fully deferred. It is constantly worked through in fragments.

Peru lives in permanent postponement — not resolution — and that postponement prevents explosion.

Why copper and hope matter

High copper prices in Chile function as a material deferral: they postpone confrontation without resolving it. Kast’s discourse of hope is a symbolic deferral: it asks society to wait, to behave, to trust.

But deferral without transformation accumulates traces. When the buffer fades, what returns is not reformist hope but disenchantment.

Peru’s absence of grand hope is precisely why disappointment does not concentrate.

Re-reading Spinoza and Negri through Différance

Now the convergence is clearer:

  • Spinoza warned that hope without power is unstable.
  • Negri warned that constituent power deferred too long returns as antagonism.
  • Derrida explains how: because meaning and authority are never present, only deferred.

Chile tries to stabilize presence. Peru accepts deferral as condition.

Synthesis

The difference between Chile and Peru is not order versus chaos. It is how each treats the inevitability of différance.

  • Chile attempts to cancel différance through moralization, security, and elite consensus. → Result: deferred conflict and risk of rupture.
  • Peru inhabits différance through informality, fragmentation, and adaptive politics. → Result: chronic instability without explosion.

In Derridean terms:

What is denied as différance returns as crisis. What is acknowledged as différance becomes practice.

Note

  1. Différance is the process by which meaning and order are constituted through difference and deferral, such that presence, identity, and authority are never complete but always postponed and unstable. ↩