Description
Book SynopsisBranded Bodies, Rhetoric, and the Neoliberal Nation-State, by Dr. Jennifer Wingard, explores how neoliberal economics has affected the rhetoric of the media and politics, and how in very direct, material ways it harms the bodies of some of the United States' most vulnerable occupants. The book is written at a moment when the promise of the liberal nation state, in which the government purports to care for its citizens through social welfare programs financed by state funds, is eroding. Currently, state policies are defined by neoliberal governmentality, a form which privileges privatization and individual personal responsibility. Instead of the promise of citizenship and the protections that come with it, or the American Dream to use a more common euphemism, the state uses certain bodies that will never be accepted as citizens as an underclass in service of capital (think Guest Worker Programs). And those underclassed bodies are identified through branding. In order to demonstrate just
Trade Review[T]his book is useful for explaining the processes through which individuals and groups are dehumanized. At times I found this book infuriating, which illustrates the power with whichWingard demonstrates the injustice of many of these brands. Those interested in social movements, political communication, and GLBT and immigrant issues will find this book useful. * Rhetoric Society Quarterly *
Jennifer Wingard has given us a powerful concept to think about the ways commodity logic has invaded national discourse. Her analysis of neo-liberal rhetoric is persuasively grounded in telling examples of gay and lesbian, immigrant, enemy combatant, and worker ‘branded bodies’ and of the material forces driving their circulation. Anyone interested in a smart account of the insidious and seductive culture of control should read this book. -- Rosemary Hennessey
Jennifer Wingard’s book is a must read for anyone who takes seriously that words have material power. More to the point, Wingard’s book pushes readers to see how rhetorics that circulate in an era of neoliberal global capital directly affect people and their place in the nation-state. Through thoughtful and cogent rhetorical analyses of US legislation, she lucidly shows how rhetorics have both political and, most importantly, visceral consequences. Branded Bodies offers a clear intervention into the rhetorical processes that demarcate those who matter and those who fall outside the purview of US neoliberal values in a moment of contemporary globalization. -- Rebecca Dingo
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Preface: Branding Bodies: Assembling Affective Responses The Work of Branding Bodies Chapter One: Othering and Branding: Assembling Neoliberal Identities Why Branding? Neoliberalism as Exception: The Private Made Public From Other-others to Brands: Commodifying Bodies Affective Branding: Bodies Dissolve into the Nation-State Rhetorical Assemblage The work of Branding Bodies Chapter Two: Branding the Family: U.S. Protectionsism as the Tie that Binds Branding the Nation: It’s All in the Family The Good Citizen/The Good Family Branding of Protection: The Law of the Family Mediating the Family: An Equal Opportunity Brand Families, Communities, and Nations: The Intensity of Post-9/11 Discourse Chapter Three: (Dis)Embodying Protection: Branding in the ICE Age The Right to Assemblage: Laura’s Phone Call Assembling the “War on Terror”: Post-9/11’s Branding of Terror Assembling Protection: The Development of ICE Assembling the Nation: Complicating the Citizen/Non-citizen Divide Assembling Consumers: Selling ICE as the Brand of Protection Chapter Four: “José Padilla” and “Osama Bin Laden”: Material Consequences of Branding Bodies Terrorism, José Padilla, and Osama bin Laden: Or How We Lost Our Humanity Padilla: (Dis)Assembling the Threat Racial Profiling: Defining Enemy Combatants Osama bin Laden: The Face of a Movement The Assassination of Osama bin Laden by the Coward U.S. Protectionism Bare Life: The Neoliberal Nation-State is Neither Gone nor Forgotten Chapter Five: From Branding to Bodies: (Re)Assembling the Worker Branding the Worker: Labor in Neoliberal Times Why the Worker Works: The Privatization of Public Service Worker as Mobilized Body: How GLBT Bodies Became Workers in a Post-DOMA World Worker as “Good” Family: Defining Citizenship and Humanity through Work Working an Issue: The Worker as Transnational Actor Assembling Bodies: A Call for Rhetorical Action Bibliography/References Index
