Tell Me That I Am Not a Ciganin, Damn Your Mother! The Social and Political Consequences of Enregisterment in Bulgaria
Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: In Bulgaria, the Rom/Ciganin persona is defined by non-Ciganin Bulgarians as a set of reiterated features, displayed as fixed and supposedly identifiable by all. This persona is enregistered through various semiotic processes, television being one of the most important ones. Rom/Ciganin is the name that links together a set of indexical stereotypes (naturalized as essences) and purports to denote a particular referent, a community, an ethnicity, and the individuals who, by being so labeled, are said to belong to it. Through the study of a racist act of aggression filmed in Bulgaria, I hypothesize that the hatred of Cigani passes discursively through a typification constantly reelaborated by a process of enregisterment. The making of peoples, groups, and communities is not new, but it becomes problematic when researchers, and the institution in general, relay the idea of fixed ethnic categories without problematizing them. They thus legitimize the Roma (or Cigani, Gypsies, etc.) category, and indeed the Rom persona, through the (re)production of a set of political discourses based on ethnicity and discrimination. This legitimizes a category that allows the marginalization and exclusion of individuals and families in the name of their supposed membership.
Source: Signs and Society
DOI: 10.1086/704985
Author: Cécile Canut
Institution: Université Paris Descartes
Language: English
Topic: Romani and Gypsy Studies
Subfield: General Health Professions
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2989772983