Title: Asserting racism’s relativity: an interpretive and functional discourse analysis of Flemish nationalist re-articulations of the problematic of racism
Abstract: This paper focuses on a controversial nationalist discourse that asserts that racism is [a] relative [concept]. It provides a discourse analysis of the functions these assertions and surrounding claims on racism perform in relation to the definitions of racism used, the interpretive repertoires and logics in which they are embedded, and the political project they support. Racism-is-relative discourse reserves the signifier of racism for discrimination on the basis of race and/or descent. It blocks off and delegitimizes critical anti-racist repertoires and notions such as structural racism, racism as ideology, entitlement racism or racism as white privilege. It serves as a shield against accusations of racism. It is integrated with the interpretive repertoire of new realism and with widespread neoliberal and culturalist logics. These patterns do not only characterize discourse on racism’s relativity in Flanders but can be found across Europe in contexts marked by low degrees of political awareness regarding racism’s many faces. The analysis is based on an interpretive and functional heuristic for doing discourse analysis based on a notion of discourse understood as articulatory practice.