ARTICULATORY PRACTICES OF THE STRUGGLES FOR RIGHTS IN SITUATIONS OF POLLUTION IN THE SOUTH SECTOR OF THE CITY OF CÓRDOBA

Abstract

As inhabitants and researchers along with struggles that emerge in situations of environmental pollution in the south of Cordoba City, our interest is to analyze the modes of construction of political identities in situated discursive contexts. Methodologically we appeal to the contributions of Laclau for the analysis of practices of articulation, the figures of the classic rhetoric (synecdoche, catachresis, metaphor and metonymy) as tools of speech analysis. We consider as unit of analysis four experiences of struggles in situations of pollution and as corpus the material gathered in in-depth interviews. The work consists in the identification of the signifiers privileged by the participants in such experiences, to hold accountable the inside / outside of the group formation, and the operations of construction of chains of equivalences / differences, giving attention to the synecdotic, catachresic, metaphoric and metonymic dimensions in the use of the signifiers. We then focus in the analysis of certain distinctions: neighbors / no neighbors, pollution / environment, neighborhood / south sector, affected / not affected. As results we point out two different modes of articulation in the construction of identities in situations of environmental injustice: that of the directly affected people, based in metonymic bonds in contiguity of the source of pollution, and the identity of those who doesn’t recognize themselves as directly affected people, based in metaphoric bonds.