Communication and the Public has just published a new Special issue on "Neoliberalism and the Public Sphere ".
From an initiative to a deliberative engagement in tension with an embodied, habitual mode of communication to an analysis on the construct of marginalized group in texts produced to persuade communities and policymakers, and from the neoliberal reach within Supreme Court to the forming of an anti-neoliberal public through #houstonstong movement, from the adoption of racialized and gendered girl-empowerment discourses by neoliberal political economy to the crucial theses in the context of technoneoliberalism, we have seen the encroachment of neoliberalism on everyday discourse, its incredible global spread and its discourse crafting to appeal to unconscious public dispositions. Its focus on conjoint depletion prioritizes the strategic self-interest, making transcending collective behavior impossible for structural change. Its empowerment of rich people and private companies expedites the economization of non-economic realms like emotions and attention, infringes the subjectivities and affected the agency of people who have no access to private resources. This special issue on “Neoliberalism and the Public Sphere” examines three aspects that are presented by neoliberalism to public sphere scholarship, respectively they are: 1) Subjectivity, 2) Public engagement, and 3) Agency/structure.
Guest-edited by Robert Asen, the special issue pinpoints the pitfalls marginalized group are caught in, the resistance that could be made by neoliberal public and the digital construction that renders our subjectivities vulnerable. It exemplifies the scholarship necessary to look skeptically when looking to markets for answers to public problems at value of a democratically oriented public sphere. With the awareness that neoliberalism has prescribed certain kinds of ordering/ affectivity/ structure---and this could be different, we might be able to think beyond the dominant rationalities that govern us.
We invite you to read the following articles from this Special issue that published August 13th, 2018.
Introduction: Neoliberalism and the public sphere—Robert Asen
Neoliberalism and the rhetorical invention of counterpublic attunement—
“Expensive” people: Consumer citizenship and the limits of choice in neoliberal publics—Whitney Gent
The neoliberal conquest of the Supreme Court—, ,
“#houstonstrong”: Resisting and reifying the neoliberal public—
Speaking well: The benevolent public and rhetorical production of neoliberal political economy—Rebecca Dingo
Five theses on technoliberalism and the networked public sphere—,
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