Articulations of Self and Politics in Activist Discourse: A Discourse Analysis of Critical Subjectivities in Minority Debates (Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse)

This book focuses on the discursive processes that allow activists to make sense of themselves and of the modes of politics they engage in. It shows how political and metadiscursive awareness develop in tandem with a reconfiguration of one's sense of self. The author offers an integrated pragmatic and poststructuralist perspective on self and subjectivity. He draws on Essex style discourse theory, early pragmatist philosophy, and linguistic pragmatics, arguing for a notion of discourse as a multi-dimensional practice of articulation. Demonstrating the analytical power of this perspective, he puts his approach to work in an analysis of activist discourse on integration and minority issues in Flanders, Belgium. Subjects articulate a whole range of norms, values, identities and narratives to each other when they engage in political discourse. This book offers a way to analyse the logics that structure political awareness and the associated boundaries for discursive self-interpretation. - Provided by publisher 2.2 Articulation in Poststructuralist Discourse Theory -- 2.3 A Poststructuralist Ontology of Discourse and Politics -- 2.4 Fixing Meaning Through Equivalence and Difference -- 2.5 Fixing Meaning Through the Logic of Fantasy -- 2.6 Fixing Meaning Through Social Logics, Counter-Logics and Self-interpretations -- 2.7 Destabilising and Politicising Social Logics Through Critique -- 2.8 Fixing Meaning Through Performativity and Subjectivity -- 2.9 Fixing Meaning Through Power, Domination and Subjectivation -- 2.10 Fixing Meanings Through the Self-technique of the Interview Introduction -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- 1: Problematising Self and Politics in Activist Discourse -- 1.1 Multiplicity and Coherence in Critical Subjectivities -- 1.2 Abstract Categories as Embodied Values in Political Discourse -- 1.3 Rethinking (Research About) Politics -- 1.4 Unifying the Subject of Investigation -- 1.5 Research Goals and the (Re- )Articulation of a Problematic -- 2: Discourse Theory on the Logics of Articulation, Politics and Subjectivity -- 2.1 Structuralist Semiotics and the Double Articulation of Language 4.5.1 Contradictory Logics of Integration Articulated by a Single Individual -- 4.5.2 Logics of Integration and the Imagination of Social Ontology -- 4.5.3 Integration and Imaginations of the Public Realm -- 4.5.4 Integration as a Natural Phenomenon and Integration as a Political Process -- 4.5.5 The Failure of Integration Processes and the Failure of the Integration Industry -- 4.5.6 Integration as an Accomplishment and Integration as an Unfinished Process -- 4.5.7 Indexing the Location of Integration -- 4.6 Integration in a Politicised and Polyphonic Public Space 2.11 Methodological Deficits and Challenges in Poststructuralist Discourse Theory -- 3: The Pragmatic Dimension of Discourse as Articulation -- 3.1 Pragmatically Established Boundaries for Interpretation in Talk About Integration -- 3.2 Linguistic Pragmatics as a Poststructuralist Perspective on Discourse -- 3.3 Articulatory Practice as a Variabale, Adaptable and Negotiable Performance -- 3.4 Fixing Meaning by Adhering to the Pragmatic Maxim -- 3.5 Early Pragmatist Understandings of Self and Subjectivity -- 3.6 Fixing Meaning Through Performative Language Games 3.7 Fixing Subjectivity Through Practices of Enunciation -- 3.8 Articulation as a Metapragmatic Negotiation of Interpretive Context -- 3.9 Articulating Political Awareness in the Public Realm -- 4: Articulating the Problematic of Integration in a Minority Debate -- 4.1 Integration Between Science and Politics -- 4.2 On the 'Failure' of Integration and Integration Policy in Flanders -- 4.3 The Rise and Fall of a Dutch Binary Pair: Allochthons versus Autochthons -- 4.4 Hegemonic Logics of the Migrant Problem -- 4.5 Integration in Counter-Discourse Front Matter....Pages i-xix Problematising Self and Politics in Activist Discourse....Pages 1-33 Discourse Theory on the Logics of Articulation, Politics and Subjectivity....Pages 35-89 The Pragmatic Dimension of Discourse as Articulation....Pages 91-173 Articulating the Problematic of Integration in a Minority Debate ....Pages 175-265 Self and Politics in Activist Discourse....Pages 267-391 Conclusion....Pages 393-397 Back Matter....Pages 399-451