Nødvendighedens transformationer. Dansk identitet og politisk tale

Stefan Iversen and Christian Torrild: “The Transformations of Necessity: Danish Identity and Political Talk”The article analyses the use and legitimacy of necessity as an argument in political discourse. Taking a string of different texts and speeches from the contemporary Danish debate as its empirical material, the article shows how the government of Thorning-Schmidt used necessity arguments, how the government was criticised for doing so and how the government then reacted to this critique. The readings show how necessity arguments travel and transform across texts, genres and actors as well as across time, in that the necessity argument comes to serve radically different functions in this political debate. Drawing on Bruno Latour’s ideas about the digressive and identity-forming potential of political talk, the article uses its readings to explore the relationship between the current public debate and negotiations of Danish identity.