Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The neo-liberal global order is an incompete Project rather tan a fait accompli. Various
resources are deployed in the struggle by the winners (the Banks, etc.) to pursue the Project
and extend the new order, including the symbolic resources of neo-liberal discourse. This
discourse includes a narrative of progress: the “globalized” world offers unprecedented
opportunities for “growth” through intensified “competition”, but requiring unfettered “free
trade” and the dismantling of “state bureauucracy” and “unaffordable” welfare programmes,
“flexibility” of labour, “transparency”, “modernization” and so forth. This discourse projects
and contributes to actualizing new forms of productive activity, new social relations, new
forms of identity, new values, etc. It appears in specific forms and transformations in different
spheres of life. For instance, the concept of “flexibility” variously enters economic discourse,
political discourse, educational discourse, and the representations of everyday life in
advertising and popular culture. Part of analytical task is describe this field of dispersal.
But as the example of flexibility shows, the discourse of neo-liberalism are not just neo-liberal
discourses. Theres is a new structuring of diversity, not a homogenization. So for instance the
“other” of “flexibility” is what we might call a discourse of “insegurity” which represents social
life in terms of insecurity, risk, anxiety, etc. Both however construc social problems as
problems for individuals (“flexibility” as an individual virtue, “welfare dependence” as an
individual flaw, “insecurity” as an individual problem)
The changing network of practices which constitutes the new order includes a changing
network of genres. For instance, changes in working practices (towards team work), in
practices of governance (towards “partnership” and “networking”), in education (towards
forms of family learning) all include new genres.
What is at issue is the structuring and restructuring of relationships within this network, as
well as the structuring of diversity (the dominance of media public spheres over social
movement public spheres), and the constestations of and struggles over these. And how this
network contributes to shifting social relations, shifting relations of power, shifting identities
and so forth.
CDA can constitute a resource for struggle in so far as ir does not isolate language but
addresses the shifting network of practices in a way which produces both clearer
understanding of how languages figures in hegemonic struggles around neo-liberalism, and
how struggles against neo-liberalism can be partly pursued in language. It asks: what are the
problems facing people, what are they doing in response, how can these resistances be
strengthened and coordinated into a plausible alternative, and how specifically does language
figure in all this (recognizing the irreducible language factor without exaggerating it).
Los discursos del Neoliberalismo.
Pero, como muestra el ejemplo de la flexibilidad, el discurso del neoliberalismo no son sólo
discursos neoliberales. Hay una nueva estructuración de la diversidad, no una
homogeneización. Entonces, por ejemplo, el "otro" de "flexibilidad" es lo que podríamos
llamar un discurso de "inseguridad" que representa la vida social en términos de inseguridad,
riesgo, ansiedad, etc. Sin embargo, ambos construyen problemas sociales como problemas
para los individuos ("flexibilidad"). como una virtud individual, la "dependencia del bienestar"
como un defecto individual, la "inseguridad" como un problema individual)
La red cambiante de prácticas que constituye el nuevo orden incluye una red cambiante de
géneros. Por ejemplo, los cambios en las prácticas de trabajo (hacia el trabajo en equipo), en
las prácticas de gobernanza (hacia la "asociación" y la "creación de redes"), en la educación
(hacia formas de aprendizaje familiar) incluyen todos los nuevos géneros.
CDA puede constituir un recurso para la lucha en la medida en que no aísla el lenguaje sino
que aborda la red cambiante de prácticas de una manera que produce una comprensión más
clara de cómo las lenguas figuran en las luchas hegemónicas en torno al neoliberalismo, y
cómo las luchas contra el neoliberalismo Se puede perseguir en parte en el lenguaje. Pregunta:
¿cuáles son los problemas a los que se enfrentan las personas, qué están haciendo en
respuesta, cómo pueden fortalecerse y coordinarse estas resistencias en una alternativa
plausible, y cómo específicamente el lenguaje figura en todo esto (reconocer el factor
irreducible del lenguaje sin exagerarlo)?