»Although this is not yet proven«: Characteristic discoursive gesture of contemporary institutional racism Cover Image

»Čeprav to še ni dokazano«: značilna diskurzivna gesta sodobnega institucionalnega rasizma
»Although this is not yet proven«: Characteristic discoursive gesture of contemporary institutional racism

Author(s): Primož Krašovec
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: Slovensko sociološko društvo (in FDV)
Keywords: racism; difference; danger; symbolic crime; the body

Summary/Abstract: In this article we tried to prove that contemporary racism does not need race anymore and that logic of racist ideology is also used to condemn the differences which are usually not perceived as objects of racism. We based our work on the discoursive gesture »although this is not yet proven«, which had been discovered recently in media discourse and in discourse of medicine, psychiatry and repressive institutions in Slovenia. This gesture marks the shift in the working of the before mentioned institutions and discourses when they encounter the difference and therefore replace their ordinary ways of work with extraordinary. When they take into account a difference as their object, institutions do act without material evidence just on the basis of fantastic danger, which is represented by the difference itself. This danger is ideologically represented as »contageousness«, which might, without introducing »necessary« measures, harm the »healthy part« of society. Diseases and other malfunctions of the body need to, according to racist ideology, manifest themselves as real punishments for symbolic crimes of the different. This is the reason why institutions do not need any other evidence apart from difference itself for their racist acts.

  • Issue Year: 20/2004
  • Issue No: 46-47
  • Page Range: 207-217
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: Slovenian