Portraitfoto Fiona Makulik

Fiona Sophie Makulik

Abortion – Diachrony of a Counter Discourse

The subject of this paper are the so-called practices of contradiction that were used in the German abortion discourse. This refers to statements that are directed against something, i.e. that are used to contradict something. The actors taken into account can largely be assigned to the feminist camp or the women’s rights movement, whereby the data comes from various women’s archives. Three time periods are taken into account, which stand out due to concise discursive events: 1971-75, 1990-94, 2018-2022. Thus, a diachronic perspective is taken on a partial discourse that resists the dominant discourse. Due to its subject matter and the underlying theory, the work is assigned to feminist linguistics as well as discourse and political linguistics.

Contact

Research interests

  • feminist linguistics
  • discourse linguistics
  • political linguistics
  • internet linguistics

Vita

  • since 2023
    elected member of the Care, Equality and Diversity Board at the RTG Contradiction Studies
  • 2022
    Master’s degree in language and communication studies at the University of Greifswald
  • 2020
    Internship at the Department of Applied Linguistics at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (Zurich).
  • 2019 – 2021
    Student assistant at the Institute for German Philology (University of Greifswald; Prof. Dr. Konstanze Marx).
  • 2018
    Bachelor in German Studies and Philosophy at the University of Bremen
  • 2017
    student assistant at the conference Contradiction Studies: Mapping the Field
  • 2015 – 2017
    Student assistant in the project Linguistic Practices of Paradoxical Recognition of Person and Thing in German Colonialism at the University of Bremen, Prof. Philipp Dreesen
  • 2022
    Member of the Working Group on Linguistic Pragmatics e.V.
  • 2018
    Member of the Working Group Language in Politics e.V.

Talks, Workshops and Events

  • 2024
    Talk Zwischen Linguistik, Widersprüchen und Feminismus. Ein Werkstattbericht zum Promotionsprojekt Abtreibung – Diachronie eines Gegendiskurses at the seminar Sprache, Wissen, Macht in biomedizinischen Diskursen (Dr. Constanze Spieß and Lesley-Ann Kern). 25.01.2024, University of Marburg
  • 2023
    Talk Nur Widersprüche oder doch diskursive (disruptive) Ereignisse? [Only contradictions or discursive (disruptive) events after all?] at the Conference: Discourses in/of Disruption. 16.11.-17.11.2023, TU Dresden
  • 2023
    Talk Zur Beziehung von Positionierung und Widersprechen am Beispiel des feministischen Abtreibungsdiskurses in Deutschland. [On the Relation between Opponing and Objecting in Feminist Discourse on Abortion in Germany]. at the Conference: Debate, Oppogne, Protest – Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Linguistic Practices of Objecting. International Student’s Conference 05.05-06.05.2023
  • 2016
    Talk at the junior symposium of the conference network Discourse – interdisciplinary at the Leibniz Institute for the German Language in Mannheim

Teaching

  • Summer Term 2024
    Lecture Einführung in die Syntax
    with Jonas Trochemowitz
Back to overview
coherence in thought

“The imperative of non-contradiction generally produces a coherence in thought that is often at odds with social complexities.”

Yan Suarsana
power and resistance

“Michel Foucault says: “Where there is power, there is resistance, and […] this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (History of Sexuality I, The Will to Knowledge, 1976, p. 95)”

Gisela Febel
Afterlife of colonialism

“Contradiction comes in many different forms. None is so debilitating than when the coloniser transitions, textually not politically, to decoloniality without taking the responsibility for the afterlife of colonialism, which they continue to benefit from. Self-examination and self-interrogation of the relations of coloniality, a necessity, seem nearly impossible for the coloniser who continues to act as beneficiary, masked in the new-found language of White fragility, devoid of an ethical responsibility of the very system of White domination they claim to be against.” (Black Consciousness and the Politics of the Flesh)

Rozena Maart
idea of democratic critique

“If you think that acts of contradicting someone always need to point to better solutions, you haven’t really understood the idea of democratic critique.”

Martin Nonhoff
problem to be solved

“Contradiction is not primarily a problem to be solved but a motor we cannot do without.”

Martin Nonhoff