Abstract
This paper examines the role of cultural racism, gendered othering, and hate speech in Slovenia through the lens of postcolonial theory, psychoanalysis, and intersectional feminism. It incorporates the concept of the imaginary as a sociosymbolic structure shaping perceptions of identity and exclusion. Using qualitative data from interviews and focus groups, this study reveals how hate speech functions as a disciplinary mechanism rooted in historical and affective imaginaries. These imaginaries normalize discrimination and project societal anxieties onto marginalized groups. The research highlights the need to address systemic imaginaries to effectively combat hate speech and promote inclusive social transformation.
References
Ahmed, Sara (2005): The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York, Routledge.
Anderson, Benedict (2006): Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London – New York, Verso.
Baider, Fabienne (2020): Pragmatics Lost? Overview, Synthesis and Proposition in Defining Online Hate Speech. Pragmatics and Society, 11, 2, 196–217.
Bajt, Veronika (2016): Who “Belongs”? Migration, Nationalism and National Identity in Slovenia. Razprave in gradivo: Revija za narodnostna vprašanja = Treatises and Documents: Journal of Ethnic Studies, 76, 49–66.
Balibar, Étienne (1991): Is there a “Neo-racism”? In: Balibar, Étienne & Immanuel Wallerstein (eds.): Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. London – New York, Verso,17–28.
Bottici, Chiara (2019): Imagination, Imaginary, Imaginal: Towards a New Social Ontology?. Social Epistemology, 33, 5, 433–441.
Butler, Judith (1990): Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. In: Case, Sue-Ellen (ed.): Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins UP, 270-282.
Butler, Judith (1993): Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. New York – London, Routledge.
Butler, Judith (1997): Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York – London, Routledge.
Castoriadis, Cornelius (1987): The Imaginary Institution of society. Cambridge, MIT Press.
Castoriadis, Cornelius (1991): Power, Politics, Autonomy. In: Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy: Essays in Political Philosophy. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 143–174.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé (1991): Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43, 6, 1241–1299.
Criminal Code (2012): Kazenski zakonik. Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, No. 50/12, with amendments.
De Beauvoir, Simone (1953/1949): The Second Sex. New York, Alfred A. Knopf.
Farris, Sara R. (2017): In the Name of Women’s Rights: The Rise of Femonationalism. Durham, Duke University Press.
Foucault, Michel (1972): The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York, Pantheon Books.
Foucault, Michel (1998): The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. New York, Pantheon Books.
Frank, Ana (2014): Feminism and Islam: Turkish Women between the Orient and the West. Ljubljana, The Peace Institute.
Gatens, Moira (1996): Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality. London – New York, Routledge.
Gatens, Moira & Genevieve Lloyd (1999): Collective Imaginings: Spinoza, Past and Present. London – New York, Routledge.
Gelber, Katharine (2019): Differentiating Hate Speech: A Systemic Discrimination Approach. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 24, 4, 393–414.
Glynos, Jason & Yannis Stavrakakis (2008): Lacan and Political Subjectivity: Fantasy and Enjoyment in Psychoanalysis and Political Theory. Subjectivity, 24, 1, 256–274.
Goldberg, David T. (2006): Racial Europeanization. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 29, 2, 331–364.
Grosz, Elizabeth (1994): Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. St. Leonards, Indiana University Press.
Hall, Stuart (1997): The Spectacle of the “Other”. In: Hall, Stuart (ed.): Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London, Sage, 223–290.
Jezernik, Božidar (ed.) (2010): Imagining “the Turk”. Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Kinnvall, Catarina (2017): Feeling Alienated? The Rise of Covert Racism in Europe. Nature Human Behaviour, 1, 8, 1–4.
Lacan, Jacques (2006 [1949]): The Mirror Stage as Formative of the function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience. Écrits. New York – London, W. W. Norton & Company.
Laclau, Ernesto & Chantal Mouffe (1985): Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London – New York, Verso.
Lentin, Alana & Gavan Titley (2011): The Crisis of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neoliberal Age. London – New York, Zed Books.
Lilleker, Darren & Marta Pérez-Escolar (2023): Demonising Migrants in Contexts of Extremism: Analysis of Hate Speech in UK and Spain. Politics and Governance, 11, 2, 127–137.
McClintock, Anne (1995): Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York, Routledge.
Miller, Jacques-Alain (1988): Extimité. Prose Studies, 11, 3, 121–131.
Miller, Jacques-Alain (2017): Extimate Enemies. The Lacanian Review, 3, 30–42.
Mohanty, Chandra T. (2003): Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham, Duke University Press.
Mohiuddin, Asif (2019): Islamophobia and the Discursive Reconstitution of Religious Imagination in Europe. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 39, 2, 135–156.
Olsson, Andreas & Elizabeth Phelps (2007): Social Learning of Fear. Nature Neuroscience, 10, 9, 1095–1102.
Pajnik, Mojca (2018): Media Logic in Disposing of Migrants. In: Žagar Ž., Igor, Kogovšek Šalamon, Neža & Marina Lukšič Hacin (eds.): The Disaster of European Refugee Policy: Perspectives from the “Balkan Route”. Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing,179–195.
Pavón-Cuéllar, Davis (2014): Extimacy. In: Teo, Thomas (ed.): Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology. New York, Springer.
Richardson-Self, Louise (2021): Hate Speech against Women Online: Concepts and Countermeasures. New York – London, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Said, Edward W. (1978): Orientalism. New York, Pantheon Books.
Scott, Joan Wallach (2007): The Politics of the Veil. Princeton – Oxford, Princeton University Press.
Spivak, Gayatri C. (1988): Can the Subaltern Speak?. In: Nelson, Cary & Lawrence Grossberg (eds.): Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. London, Macmillan, 271–313.
Taguieff, Pierre-André (1990): The New Cultural Racism in France. Telos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary, 83, 109–122.
Taylor, Charles (2004): Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, Duke University Press.
Todorova, Maria (1997): Imagining the Balkans. New York – Oxford, Oxford University Press.
van Dijk, Teun A. (1991): Racism and the Press. London – New York, Routledge.
van Dijk, Teun A. (1993): Elite Discourse and Racism. London, Sage.
Vasvári, Louise O. (2013): Gendered Hate Speech and Political Discourse in Recent U.S. Elections and in Postsocialist Hungary. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 15, 4. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2303&context=clcweb (last access: 2025-11-14).
Velikonja, Mitja (2017): Novi Drugi: Ideološke podobe beguncev v sodobni Sloveniji. Časopis za kritiko znanosti, 45, 268, 107–121.
Wekker, Gloria & Helma Lutz (2001): Een hoogvlakte met koude winden. De geschiedenis van het gender- en etniciteitsdenken in Nederland [A Windswept Plain: The History of Thought on Gender and Ethnicity in the Netherlands]. In: Botman, Maayke, Jouwe, Nancy & Gloria Wekker (eds.): Caleidoscopische Visies. Amsterdam, KIT, 1–31.
Wodak, Ruth (2015): The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean. Los Angeles, Sage.
Yeğenoğlu, Meyda (1998): Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Žižek, Slavoj (1989): The Sublime Object of Ideology. London – New York, Verso.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ana Frank

