The aim of my dissertation is to understand and critically evaluate how the idea of European memory has been conceptualised by different actors at the European level and to develop a novel, pluralist conception. Attempting to ground European integration and the attachment to Europe in historical narratives has become increasingly important for the EU since the loss of its main ideological “Other,” the Soviet Union. The projects adopted in this vein often have the explicit goal to address the “legitimacy problem” and the “democratic deficit” by promoting European identity. In the EU politics-academia nexus, where most of the related debate takes place, the buzzword “European memory” has become very fashionable in the last decade. The idea has been conceptualised in a variety of ways, but most of these are characterised by teleological frameworks and problem-solving thinking. In my dissertation, I examine and critically evaluate how the idea of European memory has been conceptualised by different actors at the European level, and I develop a novel conception based on radical democratic theory. I analyse how the concept of European memory has been used in different European institutions and cultural projects (such as the European Parliament and the House of European History), and I critically reflect on these practices. In my pluralist vision of the European mythical space, conflicting visions of the past are not regarded as an anomaly that needs to be overcome by rational consensus or as an asset that can be harvested in order to bolster the legitimacy of certain political bodies. This vision takes difference to be an inevitable condition of social life and it argues that, instead of trying to resolve conflicting interpretations of the past, social difference should be embraced and the nature of conflict should be changed so that antagonistic relationships can become agonistic ones through dialogue and education. On the one hand, my dissertation contributes to the field of memory studies with a comprehensive pluralist approach to myth. On the other hand, I contribute to European studies, and more specifically to the academic discussion about European memory, when I contextualise this theory of myth in the contemporary European politics of the past.

The thesis concerns the dynamics during the 1990s of political action by many groups of people, in what came to be called the movement of movements. The activists, who held that corporations were overstepping some mark, worked on alternative arrangements for self-rule. The thesis views the movement as micropolitics, using concepts devised by Deleuze and Guattari. It sets out particulars of the rhizomic make -up of the movement. A key point is that the movement trains participants in decentred organisation, which entails the forming of subject-groups as opposed to subjugated groups. The thesis records how the movement was shaped by earlier events in political action and thinking, especially from the 1960s on. The movement had previously been read as a push for absolute democracy (Hardt and Negri). The thesis shows that reading to have been incomplete: the movement is, in part, a push for agonistic democracy. More a practice than a form of rule, agonistic democracy is found where state power is bent on not moulding peoples into any unified polity. It is found where state power fosters conflicted-self-rule, so that every citizen may engage in the polity as a decentred "I". The thesis throws light on relations between the movement and the constitutionalist state. Part of the movement, while cynical about the existing form of state rule, wears a mask of obedience to constituted authority. When one upholds the fiction of legitimate rule, one can use the fiction as a restraint on the cynics-in-power. The play creates a shadow social contract, producing detente within the polity and within the �I.� The thesis also reports on a search in mainstream cinema for some expression of the movement's dynamics. The search leads to a cycle of thrillers, set in a nonfiction frame story about a coverup of gross abuse of state power.

Theories of recognition, once seen as a promising approach for addressing the politics of difference and identity, have recently faced a sustained critique. This thesis participates in that critical project by confronting two recognition theorists – Charles Taylor and Nancy Fraser – with the injustices of colonialism in Canada as articulated by Indigenous scholars, particularly Dale Turner. The resultant critical multilogue highlights the shortcomings in each theory, but also points to their key strengths. These insights inform a discussion of agonistic reconciliation, a concept that transcends the limits of the recognition paradigm and offers hope for more just relations between Indigenous peoples and settlers in Canada. / Graduate

The thesis concerns the dynamics during the 1990s of political action by many groups of people, in what came to be called the movement of movements. The activists, who held that corporations were overstepping some mark, worked on alternative arrangements for self-rule. The thesis views the movement as micropolitics, using concepts devised by Deleuze and Guattari. It sets out particulars of the rhizomic make -up of the movement. A key point is that the movement trains participants in decentred organisation, which entails the forming of subject-groups as opposed to subjugated groups. The thesis records how the movement was shaped by earlier events in political action and thinking, especially from the 1960s on. The movement had previously been read as a push for absolute democracy (Hardt and Negri). The thesis shows that reading to have been incomplete: the movement is, in part, a push for agonistic democracy. More a practice than a form of rule, agonistic democracy is found where state power is bent on not moulding peoples into any unified polity. It is found where state power fosters conflicted-self-rule, so that every citizen may engage in the polity as a decentred "I". The thesis throws light on relations between the movement and the constitutionalist state. Part of the movement, while cynical about the existing form of state rule, wears a mask of obedience to constituted authority. When one upholds the fiction of legitimate rule, one can use the fiction as a restraint on the cynics-in-power. The play creates a shadow social contract, producing detente within the polity and within the �I.� The thesis also reports on a search in mainstream cinema for some expression of the movement's dynamics. The search leads to a cycle of thrillers, set in a nonfiction frame story about a coverup of gross abuse of state power.

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2017-01-13T14:37:05Z No. of bitstreams: 1 marselhaevangelistadesouza.pdf: 1071788 bytes, checksum: 49f15cb51beca04d15d7be463639a1f8 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Diamantino Mayra (mayra.diamantino@ufjf.edu.br) on 2017-01-31T11:14:38Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 marselhaevangelistadesouza.pdf: 1071788 bytes, checksum: 49f15cb51beca04d15d7be463639a1f8 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-01-31T11:14:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 marselhaevangelistadesouza.pdf: 1071788 bytes, checksum: 49f15cb51beca04d15d7be463639a1f8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-05-30 / A presente dissertação pretende abordar o conflito público/político envolvendo os Evangélicos e o movimento LGBT, dando enfoque à fala e aos argumentos apresentados. O conflito abarca situações nas quais o movimento LGBT busca direitos, partindo da Constituinte de 1987, passando pelo casamento entre pessoas do mesmo sexo, pelo “Kit Gay” e tendo como conflito central o debate sobre a “Cura Gay”. A pesquisa foi desenvolvida a partir de revisões bibliográficas, da leitura de arquivos de jornais e de documentos da Câmara dos Deputados, além de vídeos das audiências públicas e das postagens dos atores envolvidos no Facebook. O objetivo é saber como os evangélicos discursam na esfera pública e as mudanças operadas por estes em seu discurso com relação a questões de moral e sexualidade. O conflito é analisado com base nas teorias da laicidade, secularização e nas noções de democracia agonística e pânico moral. / This dissertation aims to address public/political conflict opposing the LGBT movement and protestant by focusing on their speech and arguments. The conflict involves situations where the LGBT movement fight for rights, since the context of 1987 Constituent Assembly, going through same-sex marriage and the "Gay Kit", taking the "Gay Cure" issue as the central conflict. The research was developed from bibliographic review, newspaper archives and House of Representatives’ documents reading, as well as videos of public hearings and Facebook posts from activists. The goal is to understand evangelic speech in the public sphere and its changes about moral issues and sexuality. The conflict was analyzed according to theories of secularism, secularization, agonistic democracy and moral panic.

In an era when adversarial politics is condemned for either being archaic or right-wing extremism, proposing that incivility can be used to counter existing hegemonies, despite its potential to incite violence, is proposing an unorthodox project. By rejecting foundationalist approaches to the current incivility crisis, this study sees an opportunity for it to act as a populist rapture that defies simple binary categorisation and deconstructs incivility, at an ontological level, to reveal the deep meanings and concealed causes that contrast the grand narrative of hate speech. After an overview in chapter one, the study continues with a theoretical review of literature on incivility, guided by the works of radical democracy theorists who universalise what seems particular to Kenya. This review is followed by the description of Bakhtin’s concept of carnivalesque as utani, a joking relationship common in East Africa. For its theoretical perspective, the study is guided by Mouffe’s theory of agonistic democracy and a research method developed by transforming Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) work in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic, into a method for Discourse Analysis. Various concepts from Laclau and Mouffe’s work are used to innovate an explanation of how political practices in social media, both linguistic and material texts, enhance incivility and the struggle to fix a regime’s preferred meaning. Guided by Laclau and Mouffe’s Discourse Analysis, the study describes how the government is using linguistic tools and physical technologies to repair the dislocation caused by incivility in social media in its attempts to re-create hegemonic practices. Without engaging in naïve reversal of the polarities between acceptable and unacceptable speech, and considering that at the ontological level politics is a friend—enemy relation, the study argues that incivility in social media is part of the return of politics in a post-political era, rather than simple unacceptable speech. While remaining aware of the dangers of extreme speech, but without reinforcing the anti-political rational consensus narrative, incivility is seen as having disruptive counterhegemonic potential, that is, if we consider the powerplay inherent in democracy. It means that binary opposition is blind to the way power produces, and is countered through unacceptable speech. / Communication Science / D. Litt. et Phil. (Communication Science)