Crisi. Una conversazione interdisciplinare su una parola chiave della nostra congiuntura storica

Abstract

This collaborative essay aims to provide a theoretical and discursive background to the thematic issue of Languages Cultures Mediation – LCM devoted to exploring crisis/crises. It consists, therefore, of two parts. The first one starts with a few considerations on the current conjuncture, in which “crisis” stands out as a powerful keyword which is ubiquitous across mainstream communication and public debate. It continues by foregrounding some thoughts on the definitions of this term and its deceptive intuitiveness, concurring to highlight some slippages and shifts in its usage and meanings over time. Finally, it attempts to stylize some assumptions, premises, perspectives and theoretical issues concerning the conceptualization of crisis and how to interpret it, including narratives and memory work. The second part of the essay provides a review and a discussion of theoretical perspectives and interpretive tools for addressing more specifically the category of crisis as a discursive, affective and imaginative construction. In the process, it engages in a conversation with some recent analytical approaches to crisis pertaining, mostly, to the conceptual and ideological arenas of linguistics, critical discourse analysis, narrative and metaphor studies, political communication.