AbstractsLanguage, Literature & Linguistics

THE ARTICULATION OF RESISTANCE & THE ARAB “SPRING”: a post-structuralist perspective

by Kristian Dalsgård Svendsen




Institution: Roskilde University
Department:
Year: 2015
Keywords: Resistance; Arab Spring
Record ID: 1122211
Full text PDF: http://rudar.ruc.dk/handle/1800/22748


Abstract

The seminal work Hegemony & Socialist Strategy by Laclau and Mouffe and their formu-lation of a theory of hegemony has been influenced by a broad array of other works, including Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. This thesis draws attention to the more post-structuralist origins and elements of the theory in an attempt to strengthen and move these aspects further. I suggest that these insights can bring a better understanding for how to theorize resistance and, for this endeavor, propose a post-structuralist framework built around two innovative questions: What discursive structures are affecting the construc-tion (and articulations) of resistance and in so doing also incorporating them into a larger dis-cursive field? And, how does an epistemic terrain get appropriated, in the process leaving out other possible terrains through which resistances can obtain meaning? Finally I will bring this framework to an analysis of the Arab ‘Spring’ that began in 2011 with the self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor in frustration over the lack of social dignity, and now unfolds as a new Cold War in the Middle East with violent sectarian and Islamic traits.