Critical discourse interventions: the metalinguistic structure of a debate on the relativity of mainstream racism in Flanders

The trans-disciplinary field of discourse studies is replete with authors who stress the critical dimension of their work. Authors frequently problematize discourses that sustain, reproduce or constitute inequality and injustice between people and groups with differently embodied, gendered, classed, ethnic, religious and/or political selves. Nevertheless, in order to convincingly ‘own’ the label of ‘critique’, it is important that academics cross over into other genres, media and debates in the public realm, addressing not only each other, but also other actors in the public sphere. This paper provides an analysis of the discursive interventions made by activists, intellectuals and politicians who reacted to statements on racism made by Bart De Wever (Antwerp Mayor and chairman of the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA)). This politician claimed that ‘racism, like all other isms, is relative’, that 'integration policy has failed' and that the 'wrong type of migrants' have migrated. Of course, such statements are anything but original and circulate widely in Flanders, Belgium and Europe. The ensuing debate will be analysed by focusing on reactions articulated by activists, academic intellectuals and party politicians across a variety of media. By focusing on the meta-discursive and reflexive features of these critiques, the author seeks to address the question to what extent one can attribute a specificity to academic and non-academic modes of critical awareness in large-scale social and political debates. He will argue that in spite of the obvious genre-differences between academic and non-academic discourse, crossing the boundary between these genres is essential if critical discourse analysts are to live up to their name in the wider public realm.