Division and Rejection: From the Personification of the Gulf Conflict to the Demonization of Saddam Hussein

Abstract

This paper analyses the process of exclusion of Saddam Hussein, in a Spanish newspaper, El País, in the period just before the Gulf War. This exclusion procedure is articulated on two axes: division and rejection (Foucault, 1964). `Division' means establishing an inclusive us and an exclusive them, in this case, him. This move therefore entails a personification of the conflict, which produces immediate feelings of identification or rejection, and simplifies how the war is understood. Both effects are reinforced by the second move of the exclusion procedure: `rejection'. Once the two camps are established an imaginary dimension, related to the ideology of consensus and ethnic prejudices, is evoked in order to create an image of Saddam Hussein in which he plays the stranger, the irrational being, the madman, the beast and, ultimately, the personification of evil. These are the villain's attributes in the fairy tale of the just war (Lakoff, 1992), which is the script of the event activated by the newspaper for the conceptualization of the conflict and its protagonists. On the other hand, a positive image is created for a unique and ideological us, in which, as readers, we are included and absorbed.