Discourses on Modernization in the Employment Public Services: Towards a New Form of Governance?

The “crisis of the social issue” in the EU has led to a certain consensus in the need to renew the organizational and institutional model of public administration. The core of the reform implies important administrative changes in most of the European welfare states. Those changes are inspired on theories such as the new public management, management by objectives or partnership. Such changes involve both semantic (“sharing responsibilities”, “effective costs”, or the substitution of “citizen under an administration” by “consumer”) and political (predominance of scattered forms of power and the individualization of responsibilities) transformations which operate in the framework of individuals and State relations. The paradigms of activation and flexicurity have been central in this public administration modernization project. This commitment with new forms of governance of social issues has important consequences for the political and moral foundations of social cohesion, and the Spanish case is not an exception. This paper aims at looking at those representations of “modernization” (as they appear in debates about the employment services restructuring policies) in detail as well as providing references to the trajectory of such reforms of public services since the early eighties to the beginning of the crisis.

Superficialidad máxima. Superficie como posibilidad de sentido: imagen y síntoma

En estas páginas se pretende proponer un modo de entender lo visto siempre como adaptación inmanente, deseo y simbolización, esto es, entenderlo como imagen. Se hará conforme a un concepto de ‘superficie’ que prolonga la lectura que hiciera Didi-Huberman del concepto de imagen-síntoma de Aby Warburg, y se apoya en textos de teoría psicoanalítica de la mano de Jacques Lacan, en un intento no de arruinar la capacidad de hermenéutica del observador, sino de entender la búsqueda del sentido y de la esencia –del arte por ejemplo– como la investigación sobre un conflicto histórico de pérdidas, crisis y memoria. ‘Superficie’ en tanto que masa átona y sin sentido donde el ojo siempre visiona formas: ver superficie es que el ojo siempre adapte lo visto, deseando abrirlo visionariamente en su significado para recabar su verdad oculta, pero paradójicamente cerrándolo. Porque mirar imágenes supone siempre perder visión respecto de una supuesta totalidad en la que se darían todos los significados en todas sus ambigüedades y en todas sus posibilidades históricas, pérdida sólo decible en su retorno en tanto que resignificación traumática. Aquí postulamos que la ilusión será creer no que las apariencias son ilusorias, sino que más allá de ellas hay “más realidad”. Este planteamiento no sólo ratifica la posición del sujeto, inserto en una superficie/cuadro dada-a-ver, sino que descubre la brecha constitutiva que le rige y que es un “más en él” que él mismo.

The Rhetorical Construction of Corporate Logos

This research is set in the context of today’s societies, in which the corporate visual symbology of a business, corporation or institution constitutes an essential way to transmit its corporate image. Traditional discursive procedures can be discovered in the development of these signs. The rhetorical strategies developed by the great classical authors appear in the logo-symbols expressing the corporate values of today’s companies. Thus, rhetoric is emerging once again in the sense it had many centuries ago: A repertory of rules that, paradoxically, standardizes the deviations of language and whose control is synonymous with power. The main objective of this study is to substantiate the rhetorical construction of logos using as a model of analysis the classical process of creating discourse. This involves understanding logos as persuasive discourses addressed to a modern audience. Our findings show that the rhetorical paradigm can be considered as a creative model for the con­struction of an original logo consistent with a company’s image.