Diskurzívna (de)konštrukcia kolektívnej identity: súperiace obrazy „Rómov“

This interdisciplinary work explores current controversy over the collective identity of Romani and reasons for their social predicament. The first position, associated with Romani studies and identity politics, sees all Romani as a part of an 'ethnic group', and connects their plight to 'racial' discrimination and intolerance. Some anthropologists and social policy-makers call this 'primordialism' and deconstruct the notion of a unitary and natural 'Romani nation', maintaining most ghetto inhabitants are only classified as 'Romani' and their identity derives from their 'social exclusion'. Matching policies are advocated. The author combines contemporary anthropological approaches to the identity construction with theories of discourse to conceptualize the debate, completing the framework with self-reflection of social science. The method of Critical Discourse Analysis is applied in examining corpora of academic and specialized writing, policy papers and media texts for the discourse construction of identity. Arguing that both discourses are differentiated instantiations of the same diagram of power normalizing 'troublesome' subjectivities, the author touches upon the ethical responsibility of scientists deconstructing essentialist representations of identities and circulating their own constructs instead.