How to Face Reality. Genres of Discourse Within Durch Minorities Research
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How to Face Reality. Genres of Discourse within Durch Minorities Research By Baukje Prins Abstract This chapter gives an overview of developments within Dutch minorities studies from the 1980s onward. Starting from a constructivist view of the performativity of language and the situatedness of all knowledge claims, four genres of discourse are discussed, each using its own rhetorical strategies to make readers ›face reali- ty‹, and each appealing to one particular ethical-political value. The genre of denunciation calls for solidarity, the genre of empowerment promotes the value of diversity, while the report is dedicated to the emancipation of minority groups. In the 1990s, due to emerging critical voices in the public debate and the backlash against (Muslim) immigrants since the ›September 11‹ attacks on the US and the murder of Pim Fortuyn in 2002, these three genres gradually lost credibility because of their presumed ›political correctness‹. This led to the dominance of a fourth genre of discourse, that of new realism, which appeals to the value of individual responsibility. Although the four genres seem to be incompatible, this appears to be the case neither in theory nor in practice. Across what look like unsurpassable boundaries, the Dutch discourse has also produced unexpected alliances between these different genres. The chapter concludes with some self- reflexive remarks on the values and political perspective underlying this analysis itself, ending with a plea for exploring an alternative genre, that of heterogeneity, as most suitable to the ethical-political value of a liberal democracy: a responsive- ness to otherness and a commitment to justice and fairness for all. Introduction Since the early 1980s, the Netherlands have has pursued an active policy to further the integration of ethnic minority groups in Dutch society. Subsequent govern- ments put scientific experts to work to investigate the history, socio-economic position and cultural background of different minority groups – investments which testified to a strong belief in social engineering and the ›makeability‹ of Dutch society. In this paper, I will discern four significant genres of discourse within Dutch minorities studies that use different rhetorical strategies to make their 81 Baukje Prins readers ›face reality‹.1 Among these are the genre of denunciation and the genre of empowerment. But the dominant genre within Dutch minorities research has been the genre of the report. Until the early 1990s, most reports represented migrants as members of a particular minority group, i.e. as individuals who are socially and/or economically deprived because of their traditional culture. Emancipation was assumed to be the only way out, and Dutch government could help minorities achieve that aim. A decade ago, however, a new kind of report has come to the fore, in which cultures of minority groups are not so much perceived from the perspective of deprivation, but from the perspective of deviancy. I will argue that this trend in Dutch minorities research shows a remarkable affinity with a fourth genre of discourse, that of new realism. Since the 1980s, against the assumed ›political correctness‹ of the genres of denunciation, empowerment and report, new realism has become ever more dominant in Dutch public and political debates on immigration and ethnic minorities. In the course of my argument it will become clear that the different genres are constituted by different political values and frameworks. Although these differences seem to be of a paradigmatic nature, hence predict the incompatibility of the genres, this appears to be the case neither in theory nor in practice. Across what look like unsurpassable boundaries, unex- pected, ›monstrous‹ alliances are made. The theoretical framework of this research project is constituted by a construc- tivist view of the performativity of language and the inevitable situatedness of all claims to knowledge. For this reason, I will conclude this paper with an attempt to self-reflexivity: if I think it important to lay bare the constitutive values and political perspectives operative in the Dutch discourse on ethnic minorities, what about the values and political perspective underlying my own analysis? The Performative Power of Language According to the constructivist view of language, especially our public speech is neither epistemologically nor politically innocent. I will therefore not only focus on the different standpoints taken within the Dutch minorities research, but also on the different genres of discourse, i.e. the different rhetorical strategies which are used to convince readers of the validity of these standpoints. The reason that I use the term ›genre‹ is because I focus on the performative effects of a particular discourse, i.e. not so much on how it describes reality, as on the ways in which it (co)produces that reality. The way in which terms such as ›discourse‹ and ›genre‹ have come to be used, by Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, and by many discourse analysts who adopted their views, is actually quite vague. Thus, ›dis- course‹ may refer to one particular unit of text, to a corpus of specific texts, or to everything that is said and written during a particular period and in a particular place. For Foucault, dominant discourse is constitutive of the everyday lives and experiences of modern individuals. Power and knowledge are inextricably inter- 1 See for a more extensive reading of the Dutch discourse on immigrant integration Prins 2004. 82 Genres of Discource within Dutch Minority Policies twined, and we become autonomous subjects only as a result of our submission to dominant modes of discipline and normalisation (Foucault 1971; 1979; 1980). Consequently, we are not merely in the sovereign position to make use of our language; our language also makes use of us. Every sentence we utter strikes layers of meaning which may have a serious impact on the social-symbolic world in which we live. According to this constructivist view, language is a form of action with which we construct our selves and our world (Shotter 1993). Lyotard distin- guishes between different genres of discourse: »a genre of discourse imprints a unique finality onto a multiplicity of heterogeneous phrases by linkings that aim to procure the success proper to that genre« (Lyotard 1988, 129). There are stakes tied to the genres of discourse. When these stakes are attained, we talk about success: what we as speakers or as listeners perceive as the intentions of a subject, actually are »tensions exerted by genres upon the addressors and addressees of phrases, upon their referents, upon their senses« (137). Examples of such genres are the genres of seduction, prescription, and persuasion, but Lyotard also talks about the ethical, the tragic, the technical and the erotic genre (136). Sometimes he uses the notion of ›style‹, or the Wittgensteinian concept of ›language games‹ as an equivalent for ›genre‹. And, being the godfather of postmodernism, he puts much emphasis on the heterogeneity or incommensurability of genres of discourse, i.e. on the fact that one genre cannot be reduced to, or translated into another. The American feminist philosopher Judith Butler has pointed out some striking similarities between such critical (post)structuralist views of language and ›speech act theory‹ as originally elaborated by the British philosopher J.L. Austin (Butler 1997). According to Butler, speech acts such as addressing or naming are para- digmatic for the way in which human individuals are ›subjected‹ through discour- se. Like promising, naming and addressing can be seen as acts with so-called illocutionary force: in the saying a doing is implied. Thus, in expressing a promise, I have made it, and in addressing someone, I have assigned her a place in my material-symbolic order. Butler cautions, however, that there is always a difference between acting and acting upon. The assessment of the actual performative effects of a particular utterance or discourse cannot be made independent of the context in which it takes place. Any speech act can turn out to be infelicitous – because it was not uttered in the appropriate context, or because listeners somehow resisted its appeal. By emphasising this potential gap between saying and doing, between discursive practice and discursive effect, Butler convincingly wards off the fre- quently voiced accusations against Foucauldian constructivism that it leaves no room for resistance against the ubiquitous power of dominant discourse. Genres of Discourse The entire body of Dutch research reports on the socio-economic position and life world of ethnic minority groups, whether scientific or journalistic, can be per- ceived as practising the genre of realism: their aim is to convince readers of the truth of its narratives, i.e. of their faithful representation of the world ›out there‹. 83 Baukje Prins However, when one takes a closer look, it appears that within the Dutch minori- ties discourse, different forms of realism can be distinguished. Most accounts practise a form of what I call oppositional realism, i.e. in their exposition of reality, the inscribed authors, the ›narrators‹ of these stories, wish to contradict prejudice, undermine stereotypes and undo the ignorance of their intended audi- ence. But within this oppositional realism, different rhetorical strategies are used to make readers ›face reality‹, differences which appear to be closely connected to the particular standpoint, the ethical-political framework, from which the narrator perceives and constructs that reality.2 The Genre of Denunciation Until the mid-1980s, insofar as there existed a public discourse on racism and discrimination in the Netherlands, it mainly originated from left-wing anti- establishment circles. (Neo)marxist action groups and journalists denounced the exploitation of foreign workers or ›guest workers‹ by big industries, and criticised Dutch government for its complicity. Protests against discrimination and racism were also strongly motivated by memories of the persecution and mass murder of Jewish citizens during the second World War.