Abstract
For some time now crisis has been a buzzword in social discourse, political and intellectual jargon, and discussions about alternative futures. This paper aims to address a gap in these debates, by comparatively exploring the relationship between the broad socialist tradition and its contemporary derivatives and the performance of crisis. In doing so crises are not seen merely as destructive moments, as dislocatory changes in social, economic, and political conditions, but also as communicative frames of resistance, especially given capitalism is inherently contradictive and crisis-prone. The paper specifically asks: how have crises of different sorts and times, been identified and performed in the socialist tradition? Altogether, it juxtaposes four periods, of pervasive crisis performance in Western capitalism, deteriorating economic conditions, and political rupture across a number of countries. Focusing on the 1970s, the years before and after the millennium, the Great Recession of post-2008, and the years of the Covid-19 pandemic, the analysis scrutinises how prominent parties, activism, and intellectuals on the European Left have construed crisis, politicising it in the public sphere. A framework of discursive representations is utilised to look at the application of crisis rhetoric across five dimensions of communication: the diagnostic location of failure in specific systems and policy (including a crisis of the left itself) and revealing the causes and mechanisms of crisis; prognostic frames and contestations of crisis, that is the imagining of the crisis for the indeterminate future, and the policy or systemic fix that is articulated as a response.
Presenters
Giorgos CharalambousAssistant Professor of Political Science, Department of Politics and Governance, University of Nicosia, Cyprus
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2022 Special Focus—What to Make of Crises: Emerging Methods, Principles, Actions
KEYWORDS
Left, Radicalism, Crises, Discourse, Communication, Prognostic, Diagnostic
