THE MATERIALIST DISCOURSE ANALYSIS IN THE FACE OF DIGITAL MATERIALITY

Abstract

This article draws on Michel Pêcheux’s Materialist Discourse Analysis to understand digital materiality. The study employs notions such as archive, interdiscourse, and preconstructed, complementing them with original notions like the discursive form of writing-orality, computerized enunciative spaces (CEEs), and subject-avatar. Emphasizing the need to analyze the intertwining of textual archives and databases in the digital context, it is argued that CEEs function as contemporary institutions that interpellate subjects in avatar-subjects, producing a polarization effect in political discourse. By analyzing social media comments about Minister Alexandre de Moraes, the study demonstrates how digital technical materiality-normalization, mediatization, and algorithms-shapes the circulation of keywords such as “democracy” and “coup/coup-monger.” This process results in subject-avatar positions that, even when opposing, reproduce the same terms, generating a polarization effect that erases complexity and contradiction.

Keywords:
Subject-avatar; Discourse-form of writing-orality; Informatized enunciative spaces