Adherirse sin argumento. Libros de texto y "viajes extraordinarios" a finales del siglo XIX

Abstract

This article reflects about discoursive processes that allow to make grow the adherence to a certain ideology without passing by classic ways of argumentation where a thesis is defended with the support of a branch of arguments. This reflection is posed over an example taken from late XIX century, when common sense held as evident the superiority of Western Europe. Two kind of joint speeches will be put in relation: textbooks of lay school and the series of Voyages extraordinaires by Jules Verne. Once this relation is made, it allows to build a «plurifocal» discoursive formation. Differently from «unifocal» discoursive formations such as «racist speech» and «boss’ speech», where texts get united in an upper level by a common space, «plurifocal» discoursive formations only imply that corpora gathered in this way obey to a same rule system; its hetereogeneity is then preserved. The article stress on two main resources: interdiscourse and reflexivity. This interdiscoursivity is retained in two complementary levels: into the textbooks system, by the reciprocal support of subjects and the existence of transversal semantic unvariants, but also between textbooks and novels. Concerning to reflexibility, its efficacity tends to which it makes part of the blind point of enunciative activity in which children are commited, in the scholar practice and when reading novels. This idea is illustrated by the image of «Sphere», where certain Western people are locked, threatened by a mob of «savage people».