Sloganization and the Political Pragmatics of Interdiscursivity: The Social Life of a Haitian Political Critique

Abstract

In the weeks leading up to the 2013 Carnival season in Haiti, the release of a Carnival song, "Aloral," sparked controversy because of the song's critical message accusing the Martelly administration of false promises. What began as a pointed political critique (pwen) transformed into a slogan, widely repeated and recontextualized to fit a variety of discursive scenarios. This article examines the entextualization process through which the aloral critique became a slogan ("sloganization"). I explore the social context within which it was released and responded to, the poetic features that favored "detachability," and the political partisanship of its recontextualized usages. By tracing the social life of the aloral critique, I show how it was communally mobilized across time and space through public negotiations of meaning. The aloral case points to the role of political stance-taking and discursive negotiation of meaning as a fundamental aspect of the sloganization process. Beyond the specific case of Haiti, sloganization serves as a useful way to conceptualize the political pragmatics of interdiscursivity, as it points to a "shared" quality of interdiscursive texts while also highlighting the role of differential political productivity.