A History of Discursive Violence: Constructing The Amerindian "Other"

This book employs critical discourse analysis (CDA), and frame analysis, to reveal how language is utilized to maintain racism and geographic control and expansion through abyssal ideology. Such ideology, I maintain, entrenches asymmetric relations between the Amerindians of Guyana and: the colonizer; the state; and international NGOs. Inherent in theses texts is what legal scholar Boaventura de Sousa Santos refers to as abyssal thinking and repetitive discursive frames which result in the cognitive injustice of denying the Amerindians their humanity, consigning them to a state of barbarism and cultural inferiority. Resistance, however, is captured through their narratives and attempts to challenge hegemony, reconfiguring the country¿s indigenous peoples not as passive victims, but a resilient population seeking social, environmental, and cognitive justice.