Camera Fog; or, The Pendulum of Austerity in Contemporary Portugal

This essay analyzes the semantics of fog in the context of neoliberal austerity in Portugal. Drawing on portraits of young Portuguese in the style of vignettes, the essay historicizes the political and epistemological uses of fog as a medium. Attending to the materiality of fog — a blurring through which visibility occurs — the argument unearths the logical structure of recurrence in and as crisis as it affects the powers of decision-making. The goal is to push the limits of this recurring structure into the present, in order to better expose how two seemingly opposite historical eras — authoritarianism and neoliberalism — share, in fact, the enduring structure of potentiation in language and governance.