A third group of strategies of intellectual self-legitimation includes those which represent intellectual detachment from mainstream society as deriving from social status or from membership of a restricted (intellectual) elite. In van Leeuwen’s (2008) framework, this macro-strategy corresponds to personal authority legitimation, although it is of course directed at legitimising the self instead of an external social practice.
Let us begin with Anamnesis of a slogan by Teofil Pančić [S09]:
(2) I am sure that my colleagues will address everything that happened last Thursday from a variety of disciplinary approaches, therefore it is unnecessary for me to, you know, stand out; there is, however, a place that is worth focusing on, as it reveals the
core of a pathology that has costed us an impressively great deal, and surely will cost
us even more.
Here, Pančić speaks as a member of a community of “colleagues” that arguably includes analysts, commentators, experts, journalists and opinion-makers, i.e. fellow intellectuals. He therefore constructs his intellectual standpoint as based on membership of a restricted group of professional observers/interpreters of social reality. However, this is just the initial step in a broader and more sophisticated strategy of self-legitimation, which revolves around the opposition marked by the adversative conjunction “however”. Initially, the author positions himself among a community of peers and explicitly rejects the chance of ‘standing out’ from it. Subsequently, however, he contradicts his pledge by implicitly claiming to be able to focus on something that none of his colleagues seem to have noticed. What is more, this something is referred to as a matter of the greatest importance, as suggested by the metaphor “core28 of a pathology” as well as by the use both of intensifiers (such as “impressively great” and “even more”) and of markers of epistemic modality conveying certainty (such as “reveals” and “surely”). Thus, Pančić eventually does ‘stand out’ from the intellectual community in which he had initially positioned himself, a discursive move that grants him an even higher intellectual status.
This specific strategy of intellectual legitimation based on a shift from equal membership in an intellectual community to prominence is unique to Teofil Pančić’s opinion piece. Most other authors, in fact, tend not to accentuate their own ‘intellectual profile’, and the few who do are much less bold than Pančić about their belonging to a restricted intellectual elite. In most cases, they limit themselves to occasional references to situations and people that are vaguely related to intellectual, academic or artistic circles. A good example of this discursive feature is found in Wisdom, by Đoko Kesić [S07]:
(1) In principle I agree with writer Milovan Danojlić who recently said about the Kosovo events that Europe and the developed world understand only the language of force, and that no other option is left to us, today militarily and economically powerless, other than wait.
Kesić opens his commentary by illustrating his stance with regard to a writer’s opinion on the geopolitical situation of Serbia. Regardless of the specific content of the quote, this choice could be seen as a salient perspectivisation device, insofar as it situates the author on a par with the writer, and by implication associates him to a community of intellectual peers. This initial form of self-legitimation provides grounds for Kesić’s subsequent self-presentation as insightful observer and as advocate of political prudence.
An altogether different form of intellectual self-legitimation based on status is the one employed by Vuk Drašković in Kosovo and us [S10]. Let us consider the concluding paragraph of the piece:
(23) Today we learn from those who, on that 9th of March, at the Vidovdan gathering as well as at the glorious street carnivals of the Zajedno coalition, awakened Serbia, gave it back its sight and showed it the way. (24) We learn from those people who were betrayed by the merchants of democracy because freedom did not ring in the way hundreds of thousands of Dositejs from the European Serbia had wished.
In order to grasp the importance of this passage for the author’s self-legitimation, one needs to explicate the numerous references to shared knowledge it contains. The 9th of March (1991) is the date of the first of a series of mass demonstrations organised by the Serbian Renewal Movement, an opposition party led by Vuk Drašković himself, to protest against Slobodan Milošević’s rule. The next reference is to the 1992 Vidovdan gathering, another opposition event coordinated by Vuk Drašković’s political movement. Further, the Zajedno (Together) coalition is an alliance formed by Drašković’s Serbian Renewal Movement with other democratic forces in 1996, again in opposition to Milošević. Finally, Dositej is the mononym of Dimitrije ‘Dositej’ Obradović, one of the protagonists of Serbia’s national and cultural renaissance between the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. Together with Vuk Karadžić, he is regarded as the father of modern Serbian literature.
In this light, this passage is a clear attempt to praise and aggrandise the people who took part in the aforementioned political activities. This is achieved through a combination of discursive strategies. In terms of perspectivisation, the syntagm “we learn from…”, repeated in both sentences, constructs that group of politically active citizens as exemplary people worthy of imitation. This is reinforced through positive nominations (“Dositejs”) and predications (“glorious”), but mostly by representing their engagement as a noble gesture for the entire people of Serbia (through metaphors of awakening, vision and path), as well as a sacrifice in the name of democracy and a “European Serbia”. The self-legitimating force of this discursive construction stems from the knowledge, which the average Serbian reader possesses, that Vuk Drašković was himself the leader of the movement he so passionately celebrates. Thus, by praising his followers he indirectly elevates himself as a prominent figure in Serbia’s recent history, particularly as an anti-Milošević dissident and as a champion of the European ideal. This constitutes an instance of intellectual self-legitimation based on personal status and charisma, analogous to van Leeuwen’s notion of authority legitimation based on role model (2008).
Broadly speaking, discursive strategies aimed at constructing intellectual marginality on the basis of social status or membership appear to be quite rare across the sample. Nonetheless, the analysis has highlighted some interesting features concerning this specific group of strategies. The main finding is that most authors tend not to amplify or call attention to their own ‘intellectual profile’, probably for the same reasons that they largely refrain from grounding their standpoint in expertise and specialist knowledge (i.e. in order to avoid self-aggrandisement, as explained above). There are, however, two notable exceptions. One is Teofil Pančić, who discursively enacts his intellectual estrangement by playing ironically with his own status of public intellectual. The other is Vuk Drašković, who legitimises himself charismatically through implicit references to his past role of movement leader and political dissident.