The Creation of Epistemological-Empirical Knowledge, with Hillary Clinton's Political Speech as an Example

Abstract

This article is concerned with a different conceptualization of the political speech, and of language. The political speech will be re(con)figured as an "apparatus" (Barad 2001, 2007) and language as "a living force" (Colebrook, 2008). In order to make this clear, extracts from political speeches will be analysed. Throughout, the validity of another analysis of political speeches -- one inspired by new materialism -- will be emphasized. This feminist epistemological-empirical shift will be exemplified by a study of the political speeches of Clinton on 9/11. This type of epistemological-empirical knowledge proposes the inseparability of theory and emprical data in the analysis of any (sociological) event. As such, the results can be used in future sociological research and for future theoretical purposes. This article is a claim for a multi-directional sense of reality, since it is structured around the impossibility of dualist categorizations in sensible accounts of reality. In other words, this article forms the materialization of new materialism as a solution to the representationalist paradox present in current-day knowledge production in the field of politics.