Engage researcher
Engage promoters
Time span of the project
October 1st, 2021 – October 1st, 2024
Keywords
Discourse, Laclau, EU, trade policy, political communication, economic nationalism
Funding
Chargé de recherche F.R.S.-FNRS
(F.R.S.-FNRS postdoctoral fellow)
Description
This project reconceptualizes economic nationalism (EN) as a discursive artefact, in order to facilitate its analysis as an ideology in EU politics. EN has so far mainly been studied from an economic perspective, as a form of protectionism driven by national interests. This project instead proposes a communicative perspective, which looks at EN as an ideology that is discursively constructed in the public debate. Such a discursive approach draws attention to the diversity and the complexity of EN, and lets us assess EN’s position in the current ideological landscape.
To reconceptualize EN, Thomas Jacobs defines it as a thin ideology that communicates economic policies, processes, and phenomena by drawing on nationalist concepts or national identities. What makes EN ideologically ‘thin’, is that the economic realities which it rearticulates in a nationalist fashion are themselves understood in the context of an independent and overarching host ideology (e.g. neoliberalism, Keynesianism,…). This redefinition constitutes a major intervention in the literature, for it moves the study of EN beyond a narrow focus on protectionist policies, to look more broadly at how various political-economic ideologies use nationalist concepts and national imaginaries as framing devices. Rather than analysing the policies that economists label as ‘economic-nationalist’ or the explicit usage of the phrase ‘economic nationalism’ in political debates, Thomas wants to study when, how and why politicians with diverse economic beliefs integrate nationalist notions into their economic worldviews.
Scientific publications
Jacobs, Thomas. Hegemony, Discourse, and Political Strategy : Towards a post-Marxist understanding of contestation and politicization. John Benjamins : Amsterdam (2022) (ISBN:9789027211620) 233 pages. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.3/266443
Jacobs, Thomas ; Jacobs, Geert. Chapter 3. “It is, perhaps more than ever before, a matter of participation” : Ontological tension and boundary work in a free trade blog. In: Jana Declercq, Geert Jacobs, Felicitas Macgilchrist, Astrid Vandendaele, Participation, Engagement and Collaboration in Newsmaking : Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, John Benjamins : Amsterdam 2021, p. 43-66. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.3/266446
Jacobs, Thomas ; Gheyle, Niels ; De Ville, Ferdi ; Orbie, Jan. The Hegemonic Politics of ‘Strategic Autonomy’ and ‘Resilience’: COVID‐19 and the Dislocation of EU Trade Policy. In: JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. -, no.-, p. – (2022). http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/263622
Jacobs, Thomas. Review of Giuliana Elena Garzone, Mara Logaldo, and Francesca Santulli, eds, Investigating Conflict Discourses in the Periodical Press. In: Journal of European Periodical Studies, Vol. 7, no.2, p. 69-70 (2022). http://hdl.handle.net/2078.3/266444
Jacobs, Thomas. Institutions and Political Strategy in Post-Marxist Discourse Theory: A Reply to Pedro Rey-Araújo. In: Rethinking Marxism, Vol. 33, no.1, p. 154-161 (2021). (doi:10.1080/08935696.2020.1847018). http://hdl.handle.net/2078.3/266447
Scientific communications
Gheyle, Niels ; Jacobs, Thomas. Beyond conflict: choice expansion in a poststructuralist reading of (de)politicization. European Workshop in International Studies (du 6 au 9 juillet 2022).
Jacobs, Thomas. Discourse Theory as a Framework for the Analysis of Political Strategy. Post-Marxism, Hegemony, and the Discursive Reproduction of Society. Invited lecture at the symposium ‘Hegemony, Crisis, and Intervention New Perspectives on Emancipatory & Radical Democratic Discourse’ hosted by Universtität Bremen (du 22 au 25 September 2021).
Jacobs, Thomas ; Jacobs, Geert. On the discourse of free trade: engagement and conflict in an era of social media, populism and fake news. Keynote lecture at the English for Specific Purposes Study Linguistics Conference, organized by Université Paris 2 Panthéon Assas (16 décembre 2021).
Societal values
Thomas Jacobs. “The war discourses dissected: how Zelensky and Putin also differ rhetorically“, De Standaard, 1/03/2022. Voir également : https://www.engage.usaintlouis.be/les-discours-de-guerre-disseques-comment-zelensky-et-poutine-different-egalement-sur-le-plan-rhetorique/
Thomas Jacobs. “One president, two victories: Macron’s speeches dissected”, De Standaard, 24/03/2022.
Other publications
Jacobs, Thomas ; Tschötschel, Robin. Bringing agency back in: the missing link between identity, knowledge, and mediated discourse. (2021) 33 pages. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.3/266450