“Discoursing sectarianism” approach : What and how to analyze in sectarian discourses

Alghashian, Abdulaziz and Menshawy, Mustafa (2022) “Discoursing sectarianism” approach : What and how to analyze in sectarian discourses. Digest of Middle East Studies, 31 (2). pp. 83-95. ISSN 1060-4367

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Abstract

This article puts forth “discoursing sectarianism” as an approach helping overcome gaps in essentialism, instrumentalist, and constructivism as the three main lines of analyzing sectarianism. The approach takes language as a point of departure, showing how it can dually describe reality as a “neutral” medium of communication and also create reality as constitutive component of practices sectarianization. The approach also focuses on workings of ideology and power relations as part of linking language, texted in variable formats such as written speeches, monuments, or images, with contexts shaping or being shaped with them. Thus, we have to study manifestations or articulations sectarianism, for example, a speech or an image, within the broader process of their actualization or materialization (e.g., the context in which these articulations are enforced, transformed, challenged, or falsified). This broader process of discoursing sectarianism within language and beyond can thus accommodate elements predominating analyses in the three other lines of enquiry such as religion and history. The final section of the paper maps a practical and analytical toolkit for researchers and analysts seeking to investigate sectarian discourses by offering the three mutually inclusive levels of textual practices, discursive practices, and political practices.