Identity, contingency and rigidity

Abstract

This article uses key notions of the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe to analyze the identity of the media professional. Within their post-structural framework, this identity is seen as over-determined, contingent and constructed but at the same time subjected to a hegemonic articulation, based on four nodal points: objectivity, autonomy, management of resources and employee-employer relations. Combined with a theoretical discussion on the (counter-)hegemonic articulations, this allows for the field of discursivity that surrounds the identity of the media professional to be (re)constructed, resulting in four dimensions that offer potential points of identification. This field of discursivity is then used and put to the test as a series of sensitizing concepts for the analysis of the seven phone-in broadcasts the program Ter Zake (on VRT - the North Belgian public broadcasting company) has organized, illustrating both the contingency of the identity of the media professional and the rigidity of the hegemonic articulation.