ABSTRACT
Rumor emerges from states that are in crisis, where the complex elements of institutional crisis are controlled and contextualized by practices of compression and coding. Rumor is the narrative form by which the state forges and reintroduces normalcy in times of crisis. In real situations of crisis, rumor re-stabilizes society via the legitimizing channels of communication that transform myth into public information. The emergence of rumor as public culture and social discourse constitutes the common recognition that the most basic creative functions of social agents, their ability to mobilize sources of the self, relations, communities, institutional roles, and everyday life, have evaporated. The direct and indirect experiences of violence and dislocation and the resulting post-traumatic conditions and memory disorders can damage the very human resources required for transitions to democratic institutions, academia being one of them. Rumor can become one’s product and in rumor is one’s life mirrored as a creative and effective praxis.
