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Several meanings on the recent past, symbolized by the concepts ‘reconciliation’ and ‘revanchism’, were constructed during the transition period. The aim was to maintain control of the process by a sort of continuation of fear by comparing the Brazilian dictatorship to the Argentinean one which imprisoned the violators of human rights. Current paper presents some preliminary results of a still going investigation on memory and transmission of experience on the civil-military dictatorship and State terrorism in debates prior to the Amnesty Law and during the parliamentary works of the National Constitutional Assembly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the discursive and political aspects of fear by analyzing the historically situated exposure of the suffering of strangers in the public sphere. The analysis of the relations between culture and suffering privileges four topics: (1) the transformation of suffering into a political question in the West; ii) the repertoire of states and conditions each historical period discerns as socially relevant and avoidable through political action; iii) the attribution of responsibility for the suffering of strangers and iv) how the audience of suffering is addressed. Research draws on newspieces in the print media and on TV news on crime, catastrophes and epidemics, published from the 1980s onwards and allows for a reflection about the ethical repercussions of the contemporary culture of fear, here conceptualized as the politics of virtual victim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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