Mots. Les langages du politique, n°121/2019

What does "belonging to a group" mean when community practices tend to fade out or when they are a pretext for rejecting others? Discourses play a crucial role at that point: individuals give life and meaning to their social relations, as well as transform them, through discourse. This collection of articles proposes an account of the discursive construction of groups. The latter is made visible in the questioning of group-naming by the speakers themselves, as with the words pieds-noirs, harkis or Algerians in Mailys Kydjian's article, or with the naming of what is supposed to unite the group – “nationality” in the article by Suzanne Forbes and Anna Plassart or “patriotism” in Marie Plassart’s article. The discursive construction of groups can be grasped at the intersection of two dimensions, as is the case with Amnesty International, either defined by “expertise” or “engagement”, in a quest for ways to smooth out the distinctions between its “employees” and its “volunteers” (Amaia Errecart). The discursive construction of groups also appears more individually and less directly in the enunciative patterns devised by individuals when the evoke their relation to groups, as shown by Thomas Liano with his study of Jean Genet and the Black Panthers.