Discursive Arena Research Articles

Israel's Zangwill; or, The Return of the King of Schnorrers

Abstract This article explores Israel Zangwill's posthumous presence in Israeli culture, as reflected in various media and discursive arenas: press coverage of his death and Yahrzeits; trends in the translation, publication and staging of his works; the inauguration of streets bearing his name; and references to his views and legacy in various political debates. Demonstrating how the tensions and contradictions so typical of Zangwill's persona were interpreted by cultural commentators or appropriated by opposing political camps, the first part of the article traces and contextualises Zangwill's gradual disappearance from the Israeli cultural mainstream. The second part then moves on to consider Zangwill's unexpected comeback in 2021, when a musical production of The King of Schnorrers, adapted by Nati Brooks, was staged in Tel Aviv. While the renewed interest in Zangwill's work is rooted specifically in the playwright's Anglo-Jewish background, the production employs Zangwill's 1790s Jewish London to consider ethnic tensions in present-day Israel.

‘Why should we turn to fascists in their own language?’ Affordances and constraints of networked counterpublics as experienced by the group members

ABSTRACT The emergence of social networking sites (SNSs) and new media has led to scholarly interest in the possibilities they offer for creating counter publics - discursive arenas where subordinated groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses in opposition to the dominant ideology. However, most empirical research has focused on describing discursive strategies used in counterpublics and analyzing networks of specific movements or organizations, while the perception and experiences of group members remain largely unexplored. To fill this research gap, this study analyzes the internal negotiations surrounding the Facebook page 'Write it down! I am an Arab,' which serves as a counterpublic for Arab citizens of Israel. The study employs two methods: (1) interviews with 14 participants of the 'Write it down! I am an Arab' Facebook page, and (2) a thematic analysis of 1,529 comments made by Arab respondents on the same page. The findings reveal a complex understanding of the counter public, defined by internal contradictions among group members concerning its goals and pragmatics, and especially its orientation or position. While the page participants view it as a subversive platform and an alternative means to access the dominant public sphere, many commenters consider the act of addressing the Jewish public as subservient, perpetuating and normalizing prevailing power dynamics. These findings highlight that counterpublics are not homogeneous structures automatically granted natural legitimacy by the group members, and that the counterpublic's position or orientation is a crucial factor in the discursive negotiations taking place within the group.

Transnacionalização da justiça em Nancy Fraser

Based on the analysis of the theoretical-social assumptions that link Habermas' initial conception of the public sphere to the Westphalian framework of public space, Nancy Fraser proposes the need for restructuring the public sphere based on a transnational framework, given the existence of discursive arenas that go beyond the limits of the Nation State, with a strong influence on social reality. In this context, Fraser emphasizes that the concept of public sphere was developed not only to understand communication flows, but also to contribute to a normative political theory of democracy. In this theory, a public sphere is conceived as a space for the communicative generation of public opinion. Aiming to guarantee that the process is inclusive and fair, publicity should discredit views that cannot withstand critical scrutiny, for the purpose of ensuring the legitimacy of those who participate in the process. Therefore, it matters who participates and under what conditions. In these terms, two ideas are central to the analysis of the public sphere: normative legitimacy and the political effectiveness of public opinion. The absence of these elements renders the concept empty of critique and political action, according to Fraser. Therefore, the author seeks to rethink the Habermasian public sphere theory, which is implicitly guided by a Westphalian political imaginary, a vision that no longer corresponds to contemporary globalized reality.

Transnacionalização da justiça em Nancy Fraser

Based on the analysis of the theoretical-social assumptions that link Habermas' initial conception of the public sphere to the Westphalian framework of public space, Nancy Fraser proposes the need for restructuring the public sphere based on a transnational framework, given the existence of discursive arenas that go beyond the limits of the Nation State, with a strong influence on social reality. In this context, Fraser emphasizes that the concept of public sphere was developed not only to understand communication flows, but also to contribute to a normative political theory of democracy. In this theory, a public sphere is conceived as a space for the communicative generation of public opinion. Aiming to guarantee that the process is inclusive and fair, publicity should discredit views that cannot withstand critical scrutiny, for the purpose of ensuring the legitimacy of those who participate in the process. Therefore, it matters who participates and under what conditions. In these terms, two ideas are central to the analysis of the public sphere: normative legitimacy and the political effectiveness of public opinion. The absence of these elements renders the concept empty of critique and political action, according to Fraser. Therefore, the author seeks to rethink the Habermasian public sphere theory, which is implicitly guided by a Westphalian political imaginary, a vision that no longer corresponds to contemporary globalized reality.

What kind of laughter?

Abstract The article examines the pragmatic functions of the Hebrew graphic laughter marker “hhh” in a particularly turbulent public-political discursive arena – online readers’ comments to Facebook posts by the two leading contenders for the post of Israeli prime minister during the 2020 election campaign, Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz. We argue that “hhh” fulfills three functions dependent on its co-text, textual position, and length: (1) contempt marker – conveying contempt, ridicule, or disgust, towards a previous comment or post, their authors, or the associated political wing; (2) intention marker – signaling the employment of pragmatic strategies in the comment; and (3) interpretation marker – indicating the deciphering of pragmatic strategies in a previous post or comment. The findings indicate that in all three categories “hhh” is used mainly to taunt the rival political wing, at times by creating an alliance with other commenters at the expense of their common rivals.

Democratizing the discourse on criminal justice in social media: the activity for justice for Roman Zadorov as a case study

The outcomes of police investigations and legal proceedings frequently remain shielded from public scrutiny, leaving ordinary individuals devoid of access to these results and devoid of platforms for discourse. As a result, the general public’s ability to access legal materials and partake in informed discussions about them remains constricted, often reliant on processed information disseminated through mainstream media channels. However, what unfolds when materials become accessible and discussion platforms attain viability? This article studies the conditions that lead to more meaningful and extensive participation by non-state actors in criminal investigations. It also examines the attributes and consequences of the “democratization of knowledge” concerning legal cases, exemplified by the expansive public discourse surrounding the Zadorov trial on Israeli social media platforms. The paper highlights three conditions of such democratization processes: (1) the digitization of investigative materials, (2) the transparency of investigative materials to the public, and (3) the existence of discursive arenas in which people can discuss the case. I proceed to outline several ramifications stemming from the previously discussed traits of these democratization processes: (1) The preservation of materials related to individuals implicated in specific troublesome situations; (2) The utilization of “raw materials” to articulate stances and viewpoints; (3) The employment of materials to construct narratives that diverge significantly from those embraced by the establishment; and (4) The recurrent references to private individuals or public officials who might be deemed unprofessional or even corrupt.

Public services as carriers of ideas that (de-) legitimise the state: The illustrative case of free education in Sri Lanka

Vital public services have long been considered a source of performance legitimacy for states, based on the material outputs they provide for citizens. However, cumulative evidence shows that the relationship between service delivery and citizens’ perceptions of the state’s right to rule is not an instrumental equation. This article argues part of the explanation for this lies in the underexplored ideational properties of public services. Theoretically, for public services to become significant for legitimacy, they must register in the repertoire of normative ideas against which the state’s moral appropriateness is ultimately judged. This article shows how this happens, empirically, using the illustrative case of free education in Sri Lanka. Based on media, archival and interview data collected across critical junctures from independence through to the contemporary era, the historical analysis shows how free education became entwined with wider ideas about social justice during the formative period of post-colonial state transformation, how elites later capitalised on and narrated these ideas in their legitimation strategies, and how this ideational heritage has been revived to challenge the states moral authority when it is perceived to deviate from it. This case reveals the explanatory potential in tracing the entwinement of public services and normative ideas to critical junctures of state (de-)legitimation, observing how elites discursively ‘perform’ performance legitimacy, and analysing services that carry ideas as ripe discursive arenas wherein the legitimacy of the state is claimed and contested. The implication is that the category of performance legitimacy may usefully be extended beyond the instrumental, to incorporate the ideational. ‘Performance’ legitimacy is not an exclusively instrumental source of legitimacy if, through the political process of legitimation, public services become carriers of ideas that (de-) legitimise the state.

Philosophical incantations (Itihāsa and Epode). The power of narrative reason in the Mahābhārata

ABSTRACT Both the itihāsa-s of the Mahābhārata and the Platonic philosophical ‘epode’ are often used to persuade in conditions where emotion threatens to incapacitate the person for argumentative discourse. Narrative reason has its own conditions of success and failure, opening up a discursive arena in which all kinds of utterances are welcome. Emphasizing the psychagogic function of the ‘once-upon-a-time’ reason, it is worth asking who the real protagonist of the story is and whether the story has a duty or a dharma of its own to fulfill. Dharma and all the dilemmas it brings along with it constitute one of the fundamental problems that make up the whole Mahābhārata. In this essay I wonder about the dharma of the Mahābhārata itself—a literary work which gives itself the name ‘triumph’ (jaya)—and the cultural mission it fulfills in the lives of those who hear it, read it, study it, and share it with others.

Metapolitics as Programmatic Storytelling

New Right metapolitics is a challenge for discourse research as its proponents possess reflexive knowledge of the discursive arenas in which they engage. To critically analyse these discursive practices requires conceptual approaches that differ from the emic concepts of the New Right. So far, there are scant methodological reflections on the peculiarity of metapolitics. This paper offers an analytical framework to tackle these shortcomings. I argue to distinguish between narrations and narratives, and to conceptualise the New Right as a narrative community. Furthermore, I propose several analytical categories to be implemented in a sociology of knowledge approach to discourse.

The impact of local protests on political elite communication: evidence from Fridays for Future in Germany

ABSTRACT The Climate Strike Movement (or Fridays for Future) is one of the most prominent transnational protest movements nowadays. In this paper, I examine the reactions of politicians to this movement to answer the research question: To what extent have German Members of Parliament (MPs) been responsive to local environmentalist street protests by focusing their attention on the Climate Strike Movement and Environmental Policy? To this end, I apply dictionary-based quantitative text-analytical tools to study German MPs’ political communication through 292,949 Facebook posts and 43,644 parliamentary debates between September 2017 and February 2020. Focussing on the effect of the first global climate strike in March 2019 and leveraging varying protest frequencies between the electoral districts, I show that MPs are responsive to protest events in their districts. More local street protest events in an electoral district led to more attention to the Climate Strike Movement and Environmental Policies by political representatives associated with that district. Comparing different discursive arenas, I show how politicians adjust their communication according to the arena’s audience, with protests affecting the political attention to environmental policies more in parliamentary debates than on social media.

Development of Gender Studies on Ethnocultural Grounds: Problems and Prospects

The fact is that gender relations in the Caucasian ethno-social space are not only specific, but also undergo contradictory changes in the context of the general trends of modern Russian sociocultural transformation, requiring close scientific, primarily ethnological attention. However, ethnology in the region still remains under the influence of conservative ideas from the 1990s “on a return to the roots of culture, on the re-Islamization of culture”. In this difficult context, the barriers to the development of gender science in the space of Caucasian ethnic cultures are analyzed with maximum consideration of the characteristics of these cultures. On a wide range of facts and phenomena, the genderological features of the Caucasian ethnic cultures are revealed in detail (especially on the examples of the gender existence of the Adyghe ethnic groups). They are not properly studied, as well as the inconsistency of the stereotypes existing in the Russian discursive arena regarding Caucasian gender culture with facts and realities, which distances the attention of the centers of the country’s humanities from understanding ethno-gender issues. Possible (potential) prospects and horizons for the development of ethnic gender studies in the Caucasian regions are outlined. Considerable attention is paid to the particularly significant role of literary criticism (and philological science in general) in overcoming barriers to the development of gender science in the space of ethnic cultures. At the same time, it is argued that there are growing tendencies towards the formation of literary criticism as the leading science of ethnology, which is objectively facilitated by both the general trends of cultural transformation processes in modern Russia and the current conservative intentions of ethnology in the Caucasian regions.

Tourism as a Space of Possibilities: Reconciliation Tourism Enterprises in a Conflict-Ridden Destination

This study explores reconciliation tourism initiatives in Israel and the West Bank as a discursive arena in which ideas about reconciliation are constructed for tourism purposes by eight organizations that offer travel experiences that include reconciliation as a major theme. By critically analyzing the manner in which ideas about reconciliation are constructed for tourism purposes, the research provides insights into issues of reconciliation in destinations with active conflict. The presentation of fieldwork data centers on three themes: the recognition of multiple narratives, the inclusiveness of victimhood, and the commitment to transformative ontology. Each theme is supported by evidence and discussed in relation to its theoretical frameworks. Implications are drawn for practitioners tasked with marketing reconciliation tourism initiatives in conflict-ridden destinations.

Dancing between money and ideas: inclusion in primary education in the Czech Republic from 2005 to 2020

ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to analyse the implementation of inclusion policy in primary education in the Czech Republic using the arena of discursive construction by the main actors and also the impact on the acceptance of inclusion. For this purpose, we use a qualitative research strategy based on situational analysis methods – the so-called maps of discursive arenas. The study describes two arenas of inclusive education between 2005 and 2020. The turning point came in 2015, when inclusion legislation was accepted. The study results suggest that both arenas are linked by two main opposing discourses. The Special Education Discourse argues that it is more effective when children of a similar level of abilities are educated together; the Inclusive Education Discourse strives to reduce segregation and isolation of pupils with various kinds of disadvantages. Both discourses tend to polarise the inclusion debate. One of the main reasons for this polarisation is that the state is failing to create a functional platform for communication which could help overcome the conflict.

Planning as polycentric: Institutionalist lessons for communicative and collaborative planning in Global South contexts

This article puts the ‘communicative turn’ in planning into conversation with polycentric governance to offer three lessons for communicative and collaborative planning. These lessons probe the nexus of institutional-cultural contexts and (1) stakeholders’ agency to initiate, enter, and exit discursive arenas, (2) incentives and interactions among actors, and (3) information and power (a)symmetries within communicative-action-based planning processes. The empirical moments for these lessons are evinced using an ecological restoration planning project in a Global South context. The conceptual and empirical dialogues foreground Southern critiques of the limits of normative planning concepts, especially when they are decoupled from historically contingent asymmetric power structures and socio-economic differences within planning cultures.

“Write it down! I am an Arab”: The role of reader comments in the formation of networked counterpublics

Various literature has examined how affordances of online media such as openness and connectivity have constituted digital counterpublics, that is, discursive arenas where members of subordinate social groups invent and circulate oppositional interpretations of their identities. At the same time, and in sharp contrast to the bilateral nature of online media, most of this literature has focused on content produced by the group members only, without addressing neither its acceptance by the hegemonic public nor the internal discursive negotiations surrounding it. Using the Facebook page “Write it down! I’m an Arab” as a case study, the current study examines the role played by reader comments in the formation of networked counterpublics. We found that reader comments expand the counterpublic sphere in two directions: vertical and horizontal. Vertically, they produce an interface between the dominant public sphere and the counterpublic sphere. Horizontally, they function as a discursive arena within the group members.

Knowledge on Stage: Public Roles of Scientists in Times of Communicative Abundance

This article explores the challenges and dilemmas the current scenario of communicative abundance poses to experts and scientists that are willing to influence policy-making (or that are dragged to arenas of political debates). It identifies eight contemporary challenges worth noting: (1) dissemination of disinformation; (2) scepticism towards science and experts; (3) multiplication of voices with public resonance; (4) volume and (in)accessibility of data; (5) polarisation and fragmentation of publics; (6) algorithmic distribution of communication; (7) grammars of current public communication; and (8) a complex interplay between visible and invisible discursive arenas. It, then, discusses the strategies used by scientists to deal with these challenges in the context of the Covid-19 Pandemic. It does so through a series of illustrations drawn from visible scientists acting in the Brazilian public sphere. Despite the fact that novel strategies and innovative adaptions are noticed, the article also points to the resilience of top-down forms of communication.

Individual solutions to collective problems: the paradoxical treatment of environmental issues on Mexican and French YouTubers' videos

The impact of human activity on our planet is undeniable. However, this matter of fact is not fully understandable without analyzing the narratives through which people make sense of it. In this study, we aim to describe the narratives present in environmental discourses of Mexican and French YouTubers' videos. This corpus is intended to show how environmental issues are framed in the ever-growing discursive arena of entertainment and “influencing” streaming video. We set out to perform a cross-country comparison, with the purpose of contributing to the discussion of whether environmental discourse is country-specific or shared by various nations and, possibly, even global. Our study contributes to the understanding of the social construction of the environment via these discourses. Our main result points to a paradoxical treatment of environmental issues: the YouTubers of our sample represent them as collectively induced problems, but seem to mainly believe that individual-based solutions would resolve them. More broadly, our study suggests a tendency to the individualization and, therefore, the depoliticization of environmental issues as well as a globalization of the environmental discourses in YouTubers' videos.

Situační analýza a role diskurzů v sociálněvědním výzkumu

The article introduces situation analysis (cf. Clarke 2005) as an epistemologicalontological basis for science freed of the positivistic paradigm. Situation analysis in a broader perspective dives into present discourses as well as discourses that have been concealed. At the meso-level, the analysis offers insight into social and discursive arenas formed by collective actors, key material elements, social organizations and institutions. At the micro-level it is aimed at the position of individual actors in a situation. Situational analysis provides multidimensional research resonating marginalized discourses and supports the everydayness of knowledge in a socially engaged, emic research of social reality. The focus on language constructions in the humanities allows for the re-definition of one’s own entities, formulas, and rules. Their (im)possible transgression is a necessary response to the accelerated and diverse shape of the recent globalized and particularized society.

Bleed, kill, cut, kin: Uterine violence, body-talk, and feminist subjectivities

abstract Contemporary young feminists (in South Africa) are claiming and proclaiming reproductive agency, often through public social media discourses and popular activist sentiments. Key features are expressions of embodied warfare via the female reproductive organs, talk of an agentic uterus that periodically ‘tries to kill’ its host, and emphatic descriptions of violent modes of relation. This article aims to recognise that reproductive violences play out not only in the material inequities of everyday life and sexual and reproductive health/care, but also in the language practices of social collectivities, where discursive practices and norms can make or unmake, injure, negate and erase, or affirm and transform subjectivities. Proceeding from an examination of the discursive contexts in which dominant societal (hetero)norms may enact sexual and reproductive violences, I explore a broadened recognition of reproductive violence that engages with discursive arenas, namely the intimate public (Berlant 2008). My analysis shows that the discursive work done in the examined public is vital for feminist cultural production of new imaginaries of gendered and community life, and what it means to be co-imbricated in feminist social reproduction. I conclude the analysis with a gesture to feminist engagement on mutually desirable notions of reproductive justice while attending sufficiently to unexpected forms of reproductive violence.

Legacy of Teispian and Achaemenian Materiality

This paper explores the ways in which the materiality of the Achaemenian Empire was incorporated into the narratives of different polities and political groups on the Iranian Highlands. These approaches, which have continued into the present day, have marked these sites as objects of appropriation, imposition, resistance and negotiation by various actors in different discursive arenas. The current study further deals with the question of whether there was a biographical difference between distinct sites.