TY - CHAP

T1 - Grammars of Crisis

AU - Boletsi, Maria

AU - de Bloois, Joost

AU - Gräbner, Cornelia

AU - Houwen, Janna

AU - Papanikolaou, Dimitris

AU - Tsagdis, Georgios

PY - 2021/8/10

Y1 - 2021/8/10

N2 - This chapter explores the normative functions of grammars of crisis that impose restrictive diagnoses of the present, alongside the potentialities that grammatical categories hold for envisioning alternative chronotopes. The chapter is structured around parts of speech—verb/noun/adjective, tense and aspect, number, modality, and voice—that alternate between theoretical expositions and examples that showcase the potential but also the discontents of these grammatical categories in relation to crisis. What happens when crisis and critique haunt each other in the adjective ‘critical’? How can the present of crisis introduce temporal difference or queer temporalities? Can a critical grammar rethink the entanglement of the singular and plural? How does modality turn the grammar of crisis into the crisis of grammar? Can the middle voice offer an alternative to binary distinctions in crisis-rhetoric between active and passive subjects, perpetrators, and victims? We argue that a thinking-through of grammatical categories could help articulate alternative accounts of agency, subjectivity, and responsibility, antagonizing the neoliberal governmentality of crisis, even when they are implicated in its structures. Acknowledging that not all elements of crisis can be understood through the conceptual construct of grammar, the grammatical categories explored here are interrupted by fictional interjections by (invented) characters—“Grammar’s ghosts”—that seek different ways of articulating the crises they have lived or helped to create.

AB - This chapter explores the normative functions of grammars of crisis that impose restrictive diagnoses of the present, alongside the potentialities that grammatical categories hold for envisioning alternative chronotopes. The chapter is structured around parts of speech—verb/noun/adjective, tense and aspect, number, modality, and voice—that alternate between theoretical expositions and examples that showcase the potential but also the discontents of these grammatical categories in relation to crisis. What happens when crisis and critique haunt each other in the adjective ‘critical’? How can the present of crisis introduce temporal difference or queer temporalities? Can a critical grammar rethink the entanglement of the singular and plural? How does modality turn the grammar of crisis into the crisis of grammar? Can the middle voice offer an alternative to binary distinctions in crisis-rhetoric between active and passive subjects, perpetrators, and victims? We argue that a thinking-through of grammatical categories could help articulate alternative accounts of agency, subjectivity, and responsibility, antagonizing the neoliberal governmentality of crisis, even when they are implicated in its structures. Acknowledging that not all elements of crisis can be understood through the conceptual construct of grammar, the grammatical categories explored here are interrupted by fictional interjections by (invented) characters—“Grammar’s ghosts”—that seek different ways of articulating the crises they have lived or helped to create.

KW - Grammars of crisis

KW - Critique

KW - Subjectivity

KW - Tense

KW - Modality

KW - Number

KW - Middle voice

U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-74946-0_3

DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-74946-0_3

M3 - Chapter (peer-reviewed)

SN - 9783030749453

T3 - Palgrave Studies in Globalization, Culture and Society

SP - 23

EP - 49

BT - (Un)timely Crises

A2 - Boletsi, Maria

A2 - Lemos Dekker, Natashe

A2 - Mika, Kasia

A2 - Robbe, Ksenia

PB - Palgrave Pivot

CY - Cham

T2 - (Un)timely Crises

Y2 - 17 October 2019 through 18 December 2019

ER -