Discourse and Ideology in the Affiliation to Guerrilla Groups in Colombia: Beyond Ideological Sympathy.

ABSTRACT

This article is a product of the research “Meanings of work and labor reintegration practices among ex-combatants”. Its objective was to analyze the ideologies as discursive formations in which the reasons for affiliation of ex-combatants to armed guerrilla groups were articulated. A qualitative design was used, combining both discourse analysis as a method and in-depth interviews as a technique for generating information. The results show that the versions of the motives for affiliation to the armed group go beyond ideological sympathy but not ideology. Six reasons for affiliation are presented and analyzed on the basis of the effects of certain discourses on the subjectivity of the ex-combatants. It is concluded that the path towards peace-building implies new narratives about the community, detached from individualism as a contemporary ethos, as well as from the immunological and normalization paradigm from which the ex-combatants has been thought of.

ideology; discourse; armed conflict; ex-combatants; neoliberalism