Archeology of the Emptiness: a Journalistic Study (2016-2021)

Identifier:  imarina:9369125

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/imarina9369125

Authors:  Castello, Enric

Abstract:
This article analyzes the emergence and development of the concepts > (empty Spain) and > (emptied Spain) between 2016 and 2021 in two Spanish newspapers: El Pa & iacute;s and El Mundo . The first part presents a content analysis of the pieces that dealt with these concepts and the second develops on a discourse analysis during the period. Three key strata are identified in this conceptual archaeology: 2016-2019, in which the concept of >, coined in the essay by Sergio del Molino (2016), was born, circulated and mutated; 2019-2020, in which > emerges, adopted by a political movement in the context of two general elections in 2019; and 2020-2021, when both variants mature in a pandemic situation in which there is a specialization of uses that defines discourse regularities. The article proposes a mixed methodological approach with the combination of quantitative data, in a first part, and the use of the Foucaldian concepts discontinuity, diffraction, regularity and discursive formation. At the end of the article, the author offers a speculative reflection within a psychoanalytic frame of the sociopolitical success of the discourse of >.