The southern colonization by north: the financial crisis in the international press

Abstract

The crisis makes way for an imaginary of the evil, where culprits are identified and punishments applied, called sanctions. A study of the discourses of international press allows identifying a new type of colonization of the Southern countries by the Northern countries. In these discourses, we foresee a new symbolic order of the financial crisis. An order that dictates the ways of saying, thinking and acting to overcome the crisis. An order that feeds of the Promethean imaginary and that thinking conquer evil, the danger, the unexpected, the fall, opposing him antitheses, like good, safety, anticipation, progress, growth, full employment. The identification of monsters, diseases, and the projection in metaphors of his incarnation is the prelude of a fight against evil, an evil that adopts a human face: the southern countries who lived beyond their means, who consumed instead of producing, who spent instead of save and who are subject to disadvantageous reimbursement of the redemption or to aid plans that act as a form of punishment and expiation.