Multiple crisis and Discursive Political Studies

Paper presented by Amelie Kutter at the DVPW convention, University of Göttingen, 24-27 September 2024, for updates see: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Amelie-Kutter

Current diagnoses of crisis often use the term ‘polycrisis’ (Tooze, 2023) to refer to the multiplicity and interdependence of crisis phenomena that seem to characterise contemporary societies. The term evokes increased, if not ungovernable, complexity and underscores concerns about preparedness and resilience. Discourse studies, however, alert us to the fact that such notions of crisis and society do not necessarily follow from the crisis phenomena themselves, but from the contingent social construction of problems and problem-solving that unfolds performativity in mediatised political communication (Hay, 1999). This paper explores the contribution that Discursive Political Studies (DPS, Kutter 2020b) can make to the study of the politics of crisis and, more specifically, polycrisis. By DPS, I mean discourse approaches that acknowledge the epistemological implications of the linguistic turn and reconceptualise politics through this lens, such as Interpretive Policy Analysis, CDA, governmentality or hegemony studies. The paper argues that their potential can be exploited when re-considering the different theories of meaning constitution (or: theories of discourse) that they offer. Combined with insights from a review of theories of  crisis, they can guide a thorough discourse analysis of crisis. This is shown in a review of the author’s studies on the discourse of the Eurozone and the pandemic crisis (Kutter 2024, 2020b, 2014a, 2014b).