Congist'26: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Crisis

Session

Session 2.7 (Day 3)

D3-S2-K1

15 May 2026, 11:15

Kurul Odası (Istanbul University Faculty of Letters)

Conveners

Session 2.7 (Day 3): Dilbilim & Göstergebilim / Linguistics & Semiotics

• Jean-Louis Vaxelaire (University of Namur)

On the Transposition of an Energy Crisis into Language (D3-S2-K1)

Cristina Valcea (Transilvania University of Brasov)

15/05/2026, 11:15

Oral Presentation

The world is threatened, among others, by a severe energy crisis that might lead to the collapse of modern banking, transportation, and medical services in tandem with a paralysis of industrial production. Although energy crisis is a constant preoccupation of world governments, the major blackout in the summer of 2025 in Spain, Portugal, and partially in France has proved that what had seemed...

The Energy Transition as a Solution to the Ecological Crisis? A Discourse Analysis of Techno-Solutionist Ideology (D3-S2-K1)

Thomas Franck (Ghent University)

15/05/2026, 11:35

Oral Presentation

This study examines the formula “energy transition” in the Belgian French-language daily Le Soir between 24 February 2022 and 5 November 2024 (396 occurrences). Rather than a neutral label, the formula operates as a rhetorical device condensing imaginaries of technological optimism, economic growth, and ecological futures, while downplaying tensions and contradictions inherent in ecological...

Crisis as a Constitutive Recurrence – An Assessment Thought the Lens of Poststructuralist Discourse Theory (D3-S2-K1)

Ioana-Cristina Hritcu (Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca)

15/05/2026, 11:55

Oral Presentation

This paper advances the claim that crisis should not be understood as a mere contingent disruption of stable orders but, rather, as a constitutive recurrence of the sociopolitical field. Drawing on the interdisciplinary theoretical framework elaborated by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the paper aims to show how the discursive – and, therefore, necessarily incomplete and plural – nature of...