Panel at CADAAD: Discourses of Covid-19 and the reconfiguration of the political

Panel convened by Amelie Kutter at the ‘Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines’ (CADAAD) conference at University of Bergamo, Italy, on 6 July, 2022.

Panelists:
Luke Collins and Veronika Koller (University of Lancaster)
Gerardo Costabile Nicoletta (Charles University Prague)
Christiane Barnickel (Humboldt-University Berlin), Dorothea Horst (European University Viadrina, Frankfurt/O.)

This panel looks into how Covid-19 discourses have reconfigured our political subjectivities and how they normalised specific conceptions of the political. The paper approach this topic from different discourse-analytical lenses and refer to ‘the political’ as practical reasoning about policy, power-inherent language use in the political realm, governmentality and subjectivity, or new antagonisms or agonisms in political struggle over hegemony. Papers included in the panels come from different disciplinary backgrounds, including linguistics, sociology and political science, but they take an interest in the methodologically sound study of the performativity of discourse. Problems looked at include the representation of science in UK news, the construction of social groups in television programmes on Covid-19 and the ‘responsibilisation’ of citizens through new governmental techniques