(MAR)DRÖMMARNAS MONUMENT? En kvalitativ argumentations- och retorikanalys av kulturdebatten kring konstverket Drömmarnas monument.

Abstract

When the public artwork Drömmarnas monument was installed at Götaplatsen in Gothenburg in the summer of 2023, it became the starting point for one of Gothenburg's most talked about and controversial cultural events. Politicians, journalists, artists and the public made their voices heard, either criticizing the art installation or defending it. The local newspaper Göteborgs-Posten became a central arena for this cultural debate. Using social constructionism and critical rhetorical analysis as its main theoretical framework, the purpose of this essay is to better understand the cultural debate regarding Drömmarnas monument by analyzing a strategic selection of six argumentative texts published in Göteborgs-Posten and how the authors use argumentative and rhetorical strategies to convey and contend their feelings, ideas and positions regarding the debated artwork. Furthermore, this essay also aspires to examine the discourses which the argumentative texts about Drömmarnas monument may put to the foreground, and how these discourses can be understood in relation to argumentative and rhetorical strategies. Using a qualitative approach, the essay's methodological framework consists of Toulmin’s argumentation model (which makes it possible to examine how the argumentation is constructed and motivated), ethos, logos pathos (which highlight the rhetorical strategies that characterize the argumentation), and doxa (which examines the world views and accepted ‘truths’ upon which the argumentation is constructed). Together, these analytical tools allow for a broader and deeper examination and understanding of the argumentation and debate surrounding Drömmarnas monument. The result shows that there is a great width of arguments regarding Drömmarnas monument, and also a difference of how the arguments are constructed. The argumentation is found to be generally more implicit than explicit, and the artwork's role in the argument can be understood either as active or passive. The analysis also makes it clear that doxa is fundamental in understanding the argumentation and that the senders' rhetorical strategies are usually characterized by logos. The result also shows that the argumentation around Drömmarnas monument is mainly based on three discourses; the aesthetic discourse, the social criticism discourse and the cultural policy discourse. In the aesthetic discourse, arguments are made based on the artwork's artistic expression and visual embodiment, and the argumentation can to a great extent be compared to art criticism. In the social criticism discourse, the argumentation revolves around the artworks’ role as a social critic, opinion maker and activist, while the arm's length principle and the public space define the argumentation in the cultural policy discourse. The result finds that the discourse through which one argues about Drömmarnas monument is completely decisive for which dimension of the artwork the argumentation puts in the foreground. The essay has contributed to a better understanding of media debates about controversial art events and how argumentative and rhetorical strategies within these debates can reveal underlying worldviews, ideals and norms. The essay has also shown how different discourses highlight different dimensions of the complex and multifaceted nature of the public artwork, and that one can draw attention to hidden social ideals and political opinions by examining how different actors construct their argumentation and rhetoric