Transformative Knowledge Claims: Ironic Disidentification Against Hate Speech

In my talk I wish to discuss the ways irony may contribute to the empowerment of disadvantaged communities by exposing the coercive logic of the dominant regimes of truth in contemporary Hungary in the wake of their recognition of the consequences of forced migration since the summer of 2015. In response to the past two years that have seen an intensification of hate-speech organized by the Hungarian Government, I will focus on the symbolic (conceptual) aspect of agentive power in favour of political mobilization for transformative action that could emerge in spite of the overwhelming presence of the official political discourse of hate. I shall expose, on the on hand, the three major strategies of hate-speech in the current Orbán Government’s ongoing billboard campaigns. I will argue that the Hungarian Government’s coercive campaign routinely tap into the rage of the ’white angry men’ in their anti-refugee campaign since the summer of 2015 to date. On the other hand, I shall explore the subversive logic informing the discourses of the Hungarian mock-party, the Two-Tailed Party (MTTP) and analyse the strategies of disidentification as a viable disposition that can eventually result in moments of agency articulated in the refreshing voice of irony. I shall also claim that their ironic discourse is much more effective in bringing about transformative knolwdge of/about ‘migration’ than the three major models of ’integration’ in Europe: multiculturalism; assimilation, or selective exclusion; and transnationalism.