AAA 2014 CFP Linguistic Anthropology, Neoliberal Morality, and the Linguistic Incarnations of the “Enterprising Self”

Aurora Donzelli adonzelli at SLC.EDU
Fri Mar 28 08:49:00 UTC 2014


Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS, AAA 2014

Call for Papers: Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association 2014

Location: Washington DC, December 3-7, 2014

Panel Title: The Invisible Specter:  Linguistic Anthropology, Neoliberal Morality, and the Linguistic Incarnations of the “Enterprising Self”

Organizers: Aurora Donzelli


Omnipresent in contemporary cultural anthropological scholarship, neoliberalism remains relatively unthematized by linguistic anthropologists (but see for example recent work by Besnier, Cameron, Cavanaugh, Duchene, Gershon, Heller, Inoue, Matza, McElhinny, Park, Shankar, Urciuoli, Urla). This surprising divide calls for a closer dialogue between the two sub-fields. Why is the “specter of neoliberalism” (Sanders 2011: 549) haunting cultural anthropology, while shying away from linguistic anthropology?

            Though cultural anthropologists often lament neoliberalism conceptual vagueness and elusiveness, recent explorations of the intersection between governmentality and subject formation produced interesting ethnographic accounts of how neoliberal transformations impact human experience (Muehlebach 2007; Ong 2006; Povinelli 2006; Rofel 2007; Tsing 2005).

How can linguistic anthropologists’ expertise in the study of situated interaction enhance the analysis of the relation between “structures and sentiments” (Richard and Rudnyckyj 2009: 57)? We know that neoliberal structures of experience and ‘technologies of the self’ entail a new conception of the individual (Harvey 2005: 42), a new morality of volition and entrepreneurship (Freeman 2007; Gershon 2011a), and a new temporality of anticipation based on regimes of hope, fear, and desire (Adams et al. 2009). But we still lack a solid understanding of how the neoliberal “trope of individual responsibility” (Jessop 2013: 66) becomes incarnated through specific linguistic practices. How does interaction generate or challenge moral dispositions, domains of experience, and “structures of feelings” (Williams 1977) associated with the neoliberal “enterprising self” (Rose 2007)?

This panel suggests that there is great analytic promise in the study of the co-articulation between neoliberal morality and the linguistic production of subjectivity.

Besides constituting a terrain for a dialogue between phenomenology and post-structuralism, the microscopic study of communicative exchanges helps problematize simplistic representations of neoliberalism as “an overarching, unified, and coherent global trend” (Gershon 2011:537). Papers in this panel will highlight the coexistence of “liberating and constraining effects” (Freeman 2007: 272) underlying neoliberal rearticulations of moral experience. By addressing specific configurations of linguistically incarnated neoliberalism, they will disclose unexpected intersections between local antagonistic practices and those generated externally by global capitalism, thus accounting for the spaces of emancipatory expression paradoxically generated through the hypertrophic extension of market logics.

Bonnie Urciuoli will serve as discussant.

If you are interested in participating in the panel, please send a title and an abstract to adonzelli at slc.edu  no later than Saturday *April 5th.*

Thanks very much for submissions and for sharing this CFP.

references

Adams V. et al. 2009. Anticipation: technoscience, life, affect, temporality. Subjectivity 28:246–65

Besnier, Niko. 2007. Negotiating Local Subjectivities on the Edge of the Global: Amsterdam University Press.

Cameron, Deborah. 2000a. Good to talk?: Living and working in a communication culture: Sage.

Cameron, Deborah. 2000b.Styling the worker: Gender and the commodification of language in the globalized service economy. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4(3):323-347.

Cavanaugh, Jillian R, and Shalini Shankar. 2014. Producing Authenticity in Global Capitalism: Language, Materiality, and Value. American Anthropologist. 

Duchene, Alexandre, and Monica Heller. 2012. Language in late capitalism: pride and profit. Volume 1: Routledge.

Freeman, Carla. 2007.The "reputation" of neoliberalism. American Ethnologist 34(2):252-267.
Gershon, Ilana. 2011a. Neoliberal agency. Current Anthropology 52(4):537-555. 

Gershon, Ilana. 2011b. Un-friend my heart: Facebook, promiscuity, and heartbreak in a neoliberal age. Anthropological quarterly 84(4):865-894.

Gershon, Ilana. 2013. Publish and be damned: New media publics and neoliberal risk. Ethnography:1466138113502514. 

Harvey, David. 2005. A brief history of neoliberalism: Oxford University Press.

Heller, Monica. 2003. Globalization, the new economy, and the commodification of language and identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(4):473-492.

Heller, Monica. 2007. Distributed knowledge, distributed power: A sociolinguistics of structuration. Text & Talk-An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse Communication Studies 27(5-6):633-653.

Heller, Monica. 2010. The commodification of language. Annual Review of Anthropology 39:101-114.

Inoue, Miyako. 2007. Language and gender in an age of neoliberalism. Gender and Language 1(1):79-91.

Jessop, Bob. 2013. Putting neoliberalism in its time and place: a response to the debate. Social Anthropology 21(1):65-74.

Matza, Tomas. 2009. Moscow's Echo: Technologies of the Self, Publics, and Politics on the Russian Talk Show. Cultural Anthropology 24(3):489-522.

McElhinny, Bonnie S. 2007. Words, worlds, and material girls: Language, gender, globalization. Volume 19: Walter de Gruyter.

McElhinny, Bonnie. 2012. “Silicon valley sociolinguistics? Analyzing language, gender, and communities of practice in the new knowledge economy”. In Language in late capitalism, ed. Duchene A, Heller M: pp. 230-260.

Muehlebach, Andrea K. 2007. The moral neoliberal: Welfare state and ethical citizenship in contemporary Italy, University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology.

Ong, Aihwa. 2006. Neoliberalism as exception: Mutations in citizenship and sovereignty: Duke University Press.

Park, Joseph Sung-Yul 2010. Naturalization of competence and the neoliberal subject: Success stories of English language learning in the Korean conservative press. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 20(1):22-38. 

Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 2006. The empire of love: Toward a theory of intimacy, genealogy, and carnality: Duke University Press. 

Richard, Analiese, and Daromir Rudnyckyj. 2009. Economies of affect. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15(1):57-77. 

Rofel, Lisa. 2007. Desiring China: Experiments in neoliberalism, sexuality, and public culture: Duke University Press.

Rose, Nikolas. 2007. The politics of life itself: Biomedicine, power, and subjectivity in the twenty-first century: Princeton University Press. 

Sanders, Todd. 2011. Comments. In Ilana Gershon, Neoliberal agency. Current Anthropology 52(4):537-555 

Shankar, Shalini. 2006. Metaconsumptive practices and the circulation of objectifications. Journal of Material Culture 11(3):293-317.

Shankar, Shalini. 2012. Creating model consumers: Producing ethnicity, race, and class in Asian American advertising. American Ethnologist 39(3):578-591.

Shankar, Shalini, and Jillian R Cavanaugh. 2012. Language and Materiality in Global Capitalism*. Annual Review of Anthropology 41:355-369.

Tsing, Anna L. 2005. Friction: an ethnography of global connection: Princeton University Press.

Urciuoli, Bonnie. 2008. Skills and selves in the new workplace. American Ethnologist 35(2):211-228.

Urciuoli, Bonnie. 2010. “Neoliberal Education”. In Ethnographies of neoliberalism, Carol Greenhouse (ed.)162.

Urla, Jacqueline. 2012. “Total Quality Language Revival”. In Language in Late Capitalism: Pride and Profit, ed. Duchene A, Heller M: pp. 73-92 

Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and literature. Volume 1: Oxford University Press.



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