Utopia at 7 km. An analysis of the topica of Zanon's struggle as an ideal for the 21st. Century youth

Abstract

Between 2001 and 2006, in the Alto Valle region of Río Negro and Neuquén (Argentina), a series of demonstrations, many of which were staged by young people, took place. Moments of social conflict like these are also moments of discursive clashes in which the sectors involved argue from the same topoi, or places. This article offers an analysis from the rhetoric of the topica that sets the struggle of the workers of Zanon as an ideal for XXI century youth. Beyond the discursive variables that there may be in a given historical moment, there are interdiscursive dominances from which you can describe a particular social formation. According to Angenot (2010: 29), a social formation is characterized by “hegemony [that] complete in the order of 'ideology', systems of political domination and economic exploitation”. Thus, in the socio-historical moment particularly studied in this article, mass media has a main role in making visible, disseminating and building common places from which people organize their practices and beliefs. Río Negro newspaper has the leading task of shaping the news agenda in this region. However, in this work, the corpus of study is broader, since it is considered that social discourse is set from different perspectives and in various genres (Angenot, 2010). Hence, pamphlets, independent newspapers and independent films, apart from hegemonic news media, have also been analyzed.