Critique as a performative practice of (re-)articulation: on the need to elaborate on the pragmatic dimension of discourse in Essex style discourse theory

Essex style discourse theory has always taken issues of power and inequality as its main objects of theoretical and empirical reflection and critique. However, in spite of some promising recent innovations, its register is frequently deemed to be too fuzzy or abstract, its program to impractical, its strategies too vague for its critique to be effective for anyone outside the circle of its practitioners. In addition, the approach is haunted by a methodological deficit. The author of this chapter argues that many of these issues could be addressed by a more careful consideration of the pragmatic dimension of articulatory practice. The most basic element of discourse in Essex style discourse theory is the analytic unit of ‘articulation’. Articulations are usually conceived of as semiotic links between elements whose meanings are changed in the very process of linkage. The elements in question may be sentences, statements, texts, identities, practices, and/or institutions. The author argues that while valid, this emphasis on articulation as a linkage often leads to a formalism that abstracts discourse from concrete contexts of enunciation, severely hindering the critical potential of poststructuralist discourse theoretical analyses. The most powerful forms of social and political critique involve a reflexive and performative re-articulation of existing power relations into discourses that are able to open up space for counter-hegemonic voices and projects. Critique does not merely imply an awareness of the way discourses are constructed through difference and equivalence. It also implies an awareness of the specific ways in which such links and dissociations are performed and called into being. Effective critical performances need to be alienating enough to allow for new meanings to emerge but also need to retain some kind of link to the contexts in which the criticized discourses were articulated in the first place. The author proposes to consider the pragmatic dimension of articulatory practices more carefully in poststructuralist discourse analysis and critique. In order to explore the heursitic and theoretical implications of such a perspective, he will provide a brief analysis of a debate on labor unions and their right to strike in the context of Flemish (Belgian) austerity politics. All power is relational and all relationships need to be performed if they are to endure in ontologically instable social and political environments. In this analysis, the author will show how subjects can be shown to be partially aware of the contingent ways in which social and political relationships are established discursively. He argues type of metapragmatic or metadiscursive awareness is the sine que non for political awareness to emerge.