| dc.description.abstract | This text covers how the Norwegian right-wing Progress Party and the left-wing Socialist Left struggle to determine which whom to label as the ‘elite’ dominating Norway – and whom to include in the subordinated ‘people’ dominated by this ‘elite’. These parties struggle to determine the (il)legitimacy of powerholders – and this discursive struggle is my object of analysis. I utilize a discursive framework combining the Foucauldian focus on discursive regularities within Norman Fairclough’s theoretical-methodological framework of critical discourse analysis. I further employ Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s terminology and analytical strategies – which I then utilize within the sociological framework of Pierre Bourdieu. The text’s task is threefold. Firstly, I investigate the discursive conflict of the parties. This conflict has equivalents globally as ‘elites’ are problematized by various popular, or populist, parties – with the content of the term tending to be an object of struggle which political actors are unable to fully fixate. Secondly, I map how the constitution of ‘elites’ can be understood based on the objective positions of the speaking subjects within social space and the objective hierarchies of contemporary Norway – seeking to contextualize the discursive practices vis-à-vis the Norwegian field of power as found by scholars working within the sociology of elites. Thirdly, I aim to offer theoretical innovation through combining various theoretical approaches in order to finish this discursive map and contextualize it vis-à-vis the nondiscursive basis of these articulations. For these ends, I split my focus between analysing discursive regularities and contextualizing these regularities based upon the nondiscursive basis which the discourses revolve around. This text takes a theoretically heterodox approach – being heavily theoretical due to a) the complexity of the discursive/nondiscursive relationship and b) scepticism towards individual consciousness and the possibility of unmediated perceptions. The discursive analysis, which takes up approximately 75% of the analysis/discussion, focuses upon how the parties’ constitute the division between the ‘people’ and the ‘elite’ utilizing a Laclauian ‘populist reason’ – as well as how the parties’ different perceptions lead to antagonism between them. I focus upon four aspects of the parties’ discourses: a) the regularities of the discourses, b) internal ruptures, c) external resemblances and cleavages and d) the ways the parties’ struggles lead to antagonistic meaning-production on several fronts, particularly as both parties find themselves to be ‘protectors’ of the ‘people’ while they simultaneously label their rivals as the ‘enemies’ of the very same ‘people’. Thereafter, I contextualize these discursive practices through analysing how these relate to the parties’ positions in social space as well as how their articulations and silences seem to influence the Norwegian field of power. The purpose of this is both to analyse the principles behind the constitution of the ‘elite’ – as I seek the logic behind this constitution in these discourses, as well as to problematize how one’s own position relates to how one appears to perceive power and domination. I utilize Foucauldian notions of critique as the open resistance to dominant ‘truths’ through denaturalizing social conditions’ influence upon these discourses while interpreting the textual data as I seek to handle the parties’ criticism of ‘elites’ with a diverse theoretical arsenal. Through these measures, I find the Progress Party’s criticism of various symbolic ‘elites’ and the Socialist Left Party’s criticism of economic ‘elites’ to follow similar principles of meaning-production while radically clashing, too. The parties’ antagonism appears to be caused by the parties seemingly constructing social space in ways which correspond to their followers’ own positions within the Norwegian social space and their qualities and quantities of capital. | nob |