Ideologies of moral exclusion: a critical discursive reframing of depersonalization, delegitimization and dehumanization

This paper focuses on some of the issues that arise when one treats notions such as depersonalization, delegitimization and dehumanization as social practices. It emphasizes the importance of: (a) understanding depersonalizing, delegitimizing and dehumanizing constructions as embedded in descriptions of located spatial activities and moral standings in the world and (b) invoking and building a socio-moral order linked to notions of lesser humanity or non-humanity, (spatial) transgression and abjection. These concerns are illustrated by taking talk on Romanies as a case in point from interviews with Romanian middle-class professionals. It is argued that a focus on description rather than explanation might be more effective in understanding the dynamics of ideologies of moral exclusion

What is a ‘revolution’?: National commemoration, collective memory and managing authenticity in the representation of a political event

This article examines the production and management of an ideological representation of a specific political `event': the Romanian `revolution' of 1989. A critical discursive psychological approach to analyzing political discourse is used to examine commemorative addresses in the Romanian parliament. The analysis explores: (a) issues of agency, entitlement and working with regard to actual or possible alternatives; (b) a pattern of recurring categorical incumbency shifts; (c) managing the authenticity and the true nature of the `event' through invoking category-bound knowledge and predicates commonsensically attachable to the notion of `revolution'; and (d) formulating and orienting to the `events of 1989' as `revolution' and `foundational' moment in national history. It is argued that the main ideological function of drawing on such resources is that of framing/ reframing, controlling the various interpretations, public (re)formulations of the Romanian `revolution', disconnecting it from its controversial particulars and delegitimizing criticism. For a political `event' to acquire an `identity', it needs to be cast into a category with associated characteristics or features. The occasioned ideological and political significance of a political `event' lies also in its consequentiality in and for the social and ideological context in which it is invoked

Apologia

Apologi

Discourse, Dominance and Power Relations

This article focuses on some of the issues that arise when examining social inequality and similar notions such as dominance or group superiority as participants’ concerns. It emphasizes the importance of understanding constructions of inequality in terms of how they are (1) situated, constructed and invoked in talk; and (2) oriented to and part of actions and ideological practices. These concerns are illustrated with an example from an interview with majority group members on ethnic issues. This shows how particular orientations to and descriptions of inequality are constructed and what they might be doing. Implications for the study of the discursive construction and representation of social inequality in talk and the nature of inequality as an object in interaction are discussed

Accounting for extreme prejudice and legitimating blame in talk about the Romanies

This article examines the particulars of extreme prejudiced discourse about ethnic minorities in a Romanian sociocultural context. It concentrates on a detailed analysis of a single case taken from a wider project aimed at comparing and contrasting the way Romanians talk about Hungarians with the way they talk about Romanies. The article examines in detail the discourse of a middle-class Romanian accounting for prejudice and discrimination towards Romanies as part of an interview on a series of controversial issues surrounding ethnic minorities. This article tries to highlight and interrogate claims that Romanies are to blame for prejudice against them. The analysis, inspired by a critical discursive approach, has a discursive and conversational analytic focus to examine switches in talk about 'us' to talk that blames 'them'. The analysis suggests that talk about Romanies is more extreme than the anti-alien, anti-immigrant prejudiced talk studied by numerous western critical researchers. It is more extreme because Romanies are not merely portrayed as being different, but also as being beyond the moral order, beyond nationhood, difference and comparison. Talk about Romanies employs a style that, at the same time, denies, but also protects extreme prejudice. This article illustrates and discusses some of the discursive, rhetorical and interpretative resources used to talk about and legitimate the blaming of Romanies. In examining the dynamics of extreme prejudice against Romanies, this article provides a critical investigation of the social and political consequences of extreme discursive patterning. Implications for the study of discursive construction and representation of difference in talk about Romanies are also discussed

‘Mea culpa’: the social production of public disclosure and reconciliation

It can be sensibly argued that transformations of social, political and moral frameworks for constructing personal and political subjectivities have been taking place in a variety of forms and with different effects across a range of Eastern European contexts. In order to understand and describe individual experiences of social change researchers have usually been engaged in documenting the nature of these particular transformations of social, political and moral frameworks for constructing personal and political subjectivities. Although this is a very important research goal in its own right, it may not tell the whole story. Some questions still remain: How are these social, political and moral frameworks constructed by members of society through the use of various cultural and discursive resources to make sense of themselves and others? How are personal and political subjectivities actually constructed and reproduced, assumed or contested? The transition from communism to democracy has been a period when possibilities of constructing and affirming (alternative) personal and political subjectivities/identities have been innumerable. At the same time, this period has also been one of reevaluating and re-affirming personal/political biographies from under the sway of the Communist and post-communist recent past. This chapter is an attempt to capture individual experiences of social change through an example of ‘re-acquisition of biography’ (Miller, 1999) and reconciliation with the past ...

Promises and challenges in the discursive study of social representations of history

Promises and challenges in the discursive study of social representations of histor

(Re)writing biography: Memory, identity, and textually mediated reality in coming to terms with the past

This paper is concerned with how biography, memory, and identity are managed and displayed in a public confession of having been an informer for the Securitate (the former Romanian Communist Secret Police). Drawing on discursive psychology, the analysis reveals how biographical details are produced by drawing upon categorizations of people, context, and events, and organizationally relevant products such as the ‘‘archive,’’ the (Securitate) ‘‘file,’’ ‘‘information notes,’’ and personal notes. It is suggested that constructions of memory and identity are legitimated through a relationship with an organizational and personal accomplishment of accountability. The question guiding the analysis asks not why, but how remembering assumes the form that it does and how, ultimately, it can connect biography, memory, and identity to the wider ideological context. It is shown that a process of (re)writing biography is located in the ‘‘textual traces’’ contained in personal and ‘‘official’’ records. Recollections, dispositions, intentions, and moral character are intertwined with a textually mediated reality in producing the public record of disclosure, and the personal and political significance of what is remembered

Communism and the meaning of social memory: towards a critical-interpretive approach

Using a case study of representations of communism in Romania, the paper offers a sketch of a critical-interpretive approach for exploring and engaging with the social memory of communism. When one considers the various contemporary appraisals, responses to and positions towards the communist period one identifies and one is obliged to deal with a series of personal and collective moral/political quandaries. In their attempt to bring about historical justice, political elites create a world that conforms more to their needs and desires than to the diversity of meanings of communism, experiences and dilemmas of lay people. This paper argues that one needs to study formal aspects of social memory as well as "lived", often conflicting, attitudinal and mnemonic stances and interpretive frameworks. One needs to strive to find the meaning of the social memory of communism in the sometimes contradictory, paradoxical attitudes and meanings that members of society communicate, endorse and debate. Many of the ethical quandaries and dilemmas of collective memory and recent history can be better understood by describing the discursive and sociocultural processes of meaning-making and meaning-interpretation carried out by members of a polity