Knowledge, Subject, Power: Constituting the Extremist/Moderate Subject

Abstract

This is a theoretical chapter that aims at reflecting on the subject of extremism from a poststructuralist perspective.Thus, it addresses extremism from a triple dimension: knowledge, power, and subject. Indeed, addressing extremism from a poststructuralist perspective implies considering it as a discourse that produces political subjectivities. This way, in this chapter, I reflect upon how extremism as an object of knowledge and the extremist as its subject are constituted through their opposite: moderation and the moderate subject. Thus, the text analyses extremism as a way of exercising power through knowledge, constituting both the extremist other and the moderate self, asserting that discourses on extremism constitute not only otherness but, at the same time, a desirable self.