No. 5 (2020): Outsider discourses: interdisciplinary perspectives on a persistingly recurring phenomenon

Social outsiders seem to be omnipresent in Western societies, shaped as they are by historical discourses of exclusion (such as the witch hunts, colonization, the Shoah, ...); but also the resurgence of protectionist nationalism in many places today, accompanied by violence between religions and ethnic groups, as well as the observable backlash against emancipatory movements and egalitarian changes within society are just some of the current symptoms of this conjuncture of outsiderism. All these waves of persecution can be characterized as ideologically motivated campaigns of established groups against stigmatized and rigorously marginalized minorities: In all manifestations, power structures are at work that have left their traces in the diverse and competing discourses of outsiders and about outsiders, to which this dossier is dedicated.