Discursive Regimes of Democratic Decline

Religio-Ethnonationalism and the Production of Authoritarian Power

Lara Martin Lengel, Victoria A. Newsom, Desiree A. Montenegro

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2026
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781978767928
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

An international group of esteemed scholars examines how religio-ethnonationalist power is communicatively produced, normalized, and resisted through discourse.

This edited volume moves beyond conceptions of democratic decline as a purely institutional or electoral phenomenon to advance our understanding of how religion, nationalism, and media power intersect in struggles over democracy. Foregrounding the communicative processes through which affective narratives of exclusion, tradition, and morality are mobilized to legitimate authoritarian power, contributors demonstrate how discourse is simultaneously leveraged as both a mechanism of domination and a site of contestation as it shapes memory, identity, citizenship, and political belonging.

Engaging interdisciplinary conversations across global contexts including North Macedonia, Malaysia, Nigeria, and the United States, contributors highlight not only how discursive tactics of amnesia, amnesty, and cleansing are utilized to sustain religio-ethnonationalist hierarchies but also how discursive resistance can be embraced to reveal the uneven conditions from which resistance emerges. By centering communication as a site of democratic struggle, this volume offers a conceptual framework for identifying how democratic backsliding is (re)produced and challenged, ultimately emphasizing the ethical and political stakes of memory, identity, and power in shaping the future of democracy.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Discursive Regimes in the Age of Religio-Ethnonationalisms, Authoritarianisms, and Resistance
• Part I Discursive Amnesia and Religio-Ethnonationalisms
• 1 Theorizing Discursive Amnesia and Religio-Ethnonationalisms
• 2 Contested Histories and Ethnonationalism: Colonial Knowledge, Historical Mythmaking, and the Rise of Hindutva in India
• 3 Invoking an Unhealed Past: Trauma, Memory, and Biafra Resurgence, 1999–2023
• 4 Faith, Nation, and Nature: Religious Environmentalism and the Politics of Belonging in the Global South
• Part II Discursive Amnesty in Response to Religio-Ethnonationalisms
• 5 Theorizing Discursive Amnesty and Religio-Ethnonationalisms
• 6 Discursive Amnesia, Discursive Amnesty, Religio-Ethnonationalism, and Imperialistic Missions
• 7 “We Need to Pray for Our Country”: Virtue Signaling and Christian Nationalist Sympathy in White Evangelical Culture
• 8 Discursive Amnesty and the Performance of Democracy in North Macedonia
• Part III Discursive Cleansing as Religio-Ethnonationalism
• 9 Theorizing Discursive Cleansing and Religio-Ethnonationalisms
• 10 The Rise of Antisemitism and Political Extremist Ideology
• 11 The Pedagogy of Forgetting: How Christian Nationalist Curricula Produces Discursive Cleansing
• 12 Contextual Democracy Beyond Binary Opposites: Dialogical Islam and the Post-Essentialist Turn
• Part IV Discursive Resistance to Religio-Ethnonationalisms
• 13 Theorizing Discursive Resistance to Religio-Ethnonationalisms
• 14 Creating a Shared Identity: Innovative Indigenous and Civil Society Resistance to Cypriot Ethnonationalism
• 15 Yogic Resistance: Swami Vivekananda and the Rhetoric of Transcendence
• 16 Ethnoreligious Nationalism: Advancing or Impeding Women’s Rights?
• 17 Neo-Nazi Celebration and Fascist Critique: Radical Religio-Ethnonationalism and Resistance in Mainstream Balkan Rock
• Conclusion: Identity, Resistance, and Democratization in the Age of Ethnonationalisms
• Index
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Copyright