Amelie Kutter

Posts tagged ‘Diskursforschung’

Multiple crisis and Discursive Political Studies

Paper presented by Amelie Kutter at the DVPW convention in September 2024. 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. 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. Their potential can be exploited by 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.

Kutter, A. (with C. Barnickel and E. Dück) (2024) Discourses of Covid-19 and the Political. Introduction to the CADAAD Special Issue

The contributions in this special issue explore the intersection of discourse, crises and the political during the Covid-19 pandemic. By focusing on ‘the political’, the contributors go beyond understandings of ‘politics’ as procedures and processes of decision-making. Instead, they explore the nuanced ways in which pandemic discourses shape struggles over the normalised socio-political order and its legitimate subjects.

Talk: Crisis and politicisation. The example of the Covid-19 pandemic

Talk by Amelie Kutter at the JURE workshop ‘Policitisations of pandemic recovery’, 16 June, 2023, University of Helsinki. Unlike during earlier crises, the distributive effects of crisis and crisis management have not been subject of political constestation during the pandemic. What has primarily been contested is the legitimacy of national biopolitics, that is, the way by which public authorities seek to control for the health of a population in a given territory. The paper argues that the emphasis on self-determination vis-à-vis state authorities and the backgrounding of distributive effects of crisis management is related to the way the pandemic was constructed as a crisis in the first place and the specific type of political subjectivity – the responsible and resilient subject – that containment and recovery measures interpellated. This argument is drawn from discursive political studies, and a discourse conception of politicisation more specifically, which highlights the construction of political agency, opponency and voice previously unaccounted for in political competition (Kutter 2020).

Kutter & Masson (2022) Researching institutions after the discursive turn

Dieses Kapitel erscheint im von Uwe Flick herausgegebenen SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research Design. Es erkundet, welchen Beitrag qualitative Sozialforschung zur Analyse von sozialen und politischen Institutionen machen kann. Wir zeigen, dass Institutionenforschung von einer Kombination von Diskursanalyse mit Foucault’s Gouvernementalitätsstudien und mit Bourdieu’s Feldanalyse profitieren kann. Zunächst führen wir in Themen und intellektuelle Traditionen der Institutionenforschung ein, um den Lesenden die Navigation im Forschungsfeld zu erleichtern. Mit Rückgriff auf das Beispiel der Gouvernmentalität der EU-Agrarpolitik und das Beispiel des Diskursfelds der multilateralen Verhandlung in der EU führen wir dann aus, wie qualitative Forschung in Institutionen nach der diskursiven Wende projektiert, umgesetzt und reflektiert werden kann.

Authors’ workshop on the special issue ‘Covid crisis discourse’ of the Crisis Discourse Blog

This call invites blog posts that investigate phenomena of recent crisis debate from a discourse-analytical angle. The call addresses discourse scholars and students of discourse studies, who currently research discourses of the Covid-19 pandemic and related aspects of multiple crisis and who specialise in a specific discourse approach. We invite researchers to share initial or consolidated insights of their ongoing work with the specialist community and the wider audience, preparing blog posts for the Crisis Discourse Blog.

Project: The Crisis & Discourse Blog

The crisis & discourse blog is a platform for people interested in disentangling and reflecting upon forms of language use that emerge or reinforce in times of crisis. The major concern is to reveal how recurrent forms of language use and crisis discourse contribute to the entrenchment of social hierarchies or open up prospects for collective action. Researchers and students have already worked on contributions that will be published successively in thematic issues. Calls for further contributions will follow soon.

Kutter, A. (2020) Legitimation in the European Union: a discourse- and field-theoretical view

This book investigates how political authority and legitimacy is constructed in the postnational setting of the European Union. Drawing on the example of the EU constitutional debate, and the use of ‘EU constitutional speak’ in Polish and French broadsheets, more particularly, the book shows how claims for legitimacy transform while being transposed from the discourse field of multilateral negotiation to that of national media.