Construindo subjetividades: a representação do Iraque no primeiro governo de George W. Bush

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the representation of Iraq in the speeches of the Bush Administration between the years 2000 and 2004. In this way, it deals with speeches concerning the year of campaign of George W. Bush, as well as the years of his first term. To do so, this research is based on the following questions: 1) how was the representation of Iraq performed and maintained in the Bush administration's foreign policy discourse between 2000 and 2004? and; (2) how does George W. Bush's foreign policy discourses concerning Iraq expose his rhetorical strategies and undermine its own foundations enabling other means of interpretation? Given these questions, the arguments that guide this research are: 1) the representation of Iraq was supported by a dominant discourse that used opposed poles: on the one hand, the United States was included as a bastion of freedom, democracy and equality , the Self, and; on the other hand was Iraq, represented as a country trapped in an authoritarian abyss, a Rogue, sick and outlaw State, the Other; 2) This hierarchy benefited from representations presented as self-evident and, simultaneously, conditioned historical amnesias. In other words, through a portrayal of Iraq, actors, events, justifications and voices were sometimes highlighted and at other times were silenced and promptly treated in a simplistic way. Thus, in order to focus on modes of subjectivity and contradictions regarding the discourses undertaken, this dissertation observes the structure of the representations of Iraq as well as its universalist pretensions and its ability of conditioning historical amnesias. And so, the research is built on a theoretical approach under the Postmodern, Post-Structuralist and Post-Colonial (Chapter 1) premises. In addition, and in order to use a methodology that deals with these epistemological conceptions, a Discourse Analysis (AD) strategy is carried out through the deconstructionist dual reading (Chapters 2 and 3 and Methodological Appendix).