Self and Politics in Activist Discourse

Abstract

In this chapter, Jan Zienkowski provides a heuristic for analysing large-scale interpretive processes or logics articulated by activists and intellectuals who seek to construe an alternative mode of politics and subjectivity within the Flemish/Belgian minority debate. In a series of case studies, he demonstrates how people deal with problems of ideological misrecognition and interpellation when dominant discourses do not correspond to one’s sense of self. The analyses show that feelings of misrecognition frequently function as catalysts for the development of political awareness. However, the articulation of a preferred mode of politics and subjectivity requires the careful articulation of a complex interpretive logic that articulates multiple identities, experiences, signifiers, narratives and other ideological elements of discourse.