Repository logo
  • English
  • Italiano
  • Log In
    Have you forgotten your password?
Repository logo
Repository logo
  • Archive
  • Series/Journals
  • EUT
  • Events
  • Statistics
  • English
  • Italiano
  • Log In
    Have you forgotten your password?
  1. Home
  2. EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste
  3. Collane
  4. Studi di Storia
  5. 06 Words of Power, the Power of Words. The Twentieth-Century Communist Discourse in International Perspective
  6. Tautology as the Highest Form of Ideology: Reflections on Stalinist Discourse (1930-1953)
 
  • Details
  • Metrics
Options

Tautology as the Highest Form of Ideology: Reflections on Stalinist Discourse (1930-1953)

Petrov, Petre
2019
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
ISBN
978-88-5511-086-0
http://hdl.handle.net/10077/29363
  • Book Chapter

e-ISBN
978-88-5511-087-7
Abstract
The chapter takes theoretical aim at the frequent occurrence of tautology in official Stalinist language. My goal is to shed light on a phenomenon that has been inadequately understood in existing scholarship. The tautologies of Soviet ideological discourse have been traditionally interpreted as either showcasing the primitive intellectual level of party scribes or as exemplifying the general irrationalism of totalitarian language. In the scholarly tradition of langue de bois (dereviannyi iazyk, “wooden language”), a propensity for meaningless repetition was seen as one of the ways in which the linguistic medium, mobilized in the service of modern political dictatorships, aids in the disabling of independent rational thought. Against this line of interpretation, the present chapter argues that the tautologies of Stalinist language are something more than mind-numbing nonsense. A certain logic lies behind these seemingly anomalous expressions, and it could give us a key to understanding the character of Stalinist ideology. Slavoj Žižiek’s theory of ideological discourse, with its emphasis on the tautological nature of the master-signifier, and Roland Barthes’s notion of “naturalization” provide the contrasting background for my argument. By analyzing instances of tautology from official Soviet texts, I show that the logic of repetition/redundancy in them is qualitatively different from what these two influential theorizations of ideology have proposed.
Journal
Studi di Storia
Publisher
EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste
Source
Petre Petrov, "Tautology as the Highest Form of Ideology: Reflections on Stalinist Discourse (1930-1953)" in: "Words of Power, the Power of Words. The Twentieth-Century Communist Discourse in International Perspective", Trieste, EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2019, pp. 221-237
Languages
en
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internazionale
Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
File(s)
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Download
Name

09-Petrov_221-237.pdf

Format

Adobe PDF

Size

176.11 KB

Indexed by

 Info

Open Access Policy

Share/Save

 Contacts

EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste

OpenstarTs

 Link

Wiki OpenAcces

Archivio Ricerca ArTS

Built with DSpace-CRIS software - Extension maintained and optimized by 4Science

  • Cookie settings
  • Privacy policy
  • End User Agreement
  • Send Feedback