This volume is an investigation of the logics and abstract categories that motivate the interplay between integration, racism, migration, and discrimination in the political engagements of Flemish, Belgian, and/or Moroccan activists and intellectuals in Flanders.
Zienkowski approaches such endeavor through the multilayered practice of ‘articulation’. In particular, he examines the way abstract categories are articulated by his participants to discursively construct their political awareness and realities as well as occupy or disavow particular subjectivities. Chapter 1 presents a critical overview of abstract notions of self and politics filtered through activist discourse. The author problematizes such notions, as their usage and the manner in which there are appropriated vary within the contexts of interviewees. However, he stresses that these categories also carry certain social values, which allow participants to invest in or reject particular political practices and worldviews. Thus, these ‘perform important functions in the discursive construction of one's sense of self and one's sense of politics' (32).
In chapters 2 and 3, the author presents theoretical elements that inform his investigation into activist discourse. Chapter 2 specifically tackles the performative and interpretive practice of articulation from the perspective of what the author labels as the Essex school of discourse theory as a framework for analysis. He argues that while meanings and identities cannot be completely fixed nor arbitrary, they can be partially articulated with respect to related ideologies and discourses, although he notes that this theoretical orientation has methodological deficits. He attempts to resolve these by incorporating perspectives from linguistic pragmatics as well as pragmatist views on language and subjectivity. In chapter 3, Zienkowski grounds the ontological assumptions of discourse theory and enriches the concept of articulation by considering the role of language, as used in conveying metapragmatic and critical awareness and reflexivity amidst dominant ideologies, and its impact on one's sense-making and self-making. Moreover, the author provides a comprehensive review of various works that examine the pragmatic dimension of discourse as articulation, such as pragmatist philosophy, language philosophy (Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, Paul Grice), and French enunciative linguistics.
Chapter 4 provides an interpretive and functional analysis of key discourses that permeate Flemish minority politics within the context of his participants' interviews. Zienkowski focuses on his participants' re-articulation of integration-related discourses and emergent counter-discourses in terms of logics, subject positions, and narratives, which become co-constructed through interaction. While the author is explicit that his study is concerned with issues that extend beyond integration, he also concedes its importance as a value system for his participants. Chapter 5 presents the participants' articulation of their sense of self and politics. Through a pragmatic analysis of several case studies, the author demonstrates the function of politics-related signifiers in structuring activists' self-understanding as well as the creative and reflexive ways they manage interpellations that conflict with their preferred subjectivities.
The author presents a lucid discussion that links the self and politics in discourse through his integration of poststructuralist theories and a linguistics-based approach. This volume highlights the possibility of further nuancing discourse studies when approached from an interdisciplinary orientation.
