Racism and the Constitution of an Ideological Sign of Resistence

Abstract

This article aims to understand the dissemination and consolidation of an ideological sign of resistance, starting with the analysis of a verbal-visual utterance, a photo reportage published in the Portuguese newspaper Expresso. That reportage, through a series of photographs and a brief text, shows a demonstration in Lisbon, in June 2020, against the murder of George Floyd, by police officers, in the USA. The Dialogical Discourse Analysis, grounded in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and the Circle, is the theoretical and methodological basis for this article, which mobilizes the notions of ideological sign and dialogic relations. Starting with one of the photos referred to in the title of the reportage, the analysis raised meanings produced in the various axiological dialogues among spatially and temporally distinct statements, using words, images, and gestures shared during the protest demonstrations. The dialogic chains of statements show how a discourse of resistance to racism and other social inequalities is constituted, and expressed in an ideological sign.