[Linganth] in case you are looking for a SLA panel to join

[Ilana Gershon]

Dear Linguistic Anthropologists Mulling Over Attending the SLA conference,

I have room for one or two more people on my panel, so please look over 
the abstract
and see if it appeals.

The abstract:

The Labor of Mediation under Neoliberal Conditions

This panel explores how the labor of mediation, and in particular the 
labor of speaking for others--often voicing others’ words--is performed 
under neoliberal conditions, that is to say, in contexts in which to be 
a mediator is to be a paradoxical figure. How does one engage in the 
labor of mediation under neoliberal conditions when mediation is both 
essential to accomplish certain social tasks and a problem for 
neoliberal subjectivity?

The panel takes neoliberalism to originate as a socioeconomic philosophy 
developed by Hayek, Friedman and others of the Mont Pelerin Circle as a 
historically specific perspective on how best to enact capitalism, a 
perspective that currently dominates most capitalist practices 
worldwide.In implementing a Hayekian vision, practitioners on the ground 
had to develop a vision of the neoliberal subject, commonly described as 
an entrepreneurial self, conceived of as a bundle of skills, assets, 
qualities, experiences and relationships that must be constantly managed 
as one might manage a business, and thus continuously enhanced.Social 
relations, from this perspective, are contractual relationships in which 
risk and responsibility are ideally equitably balanced among actors who 
act according to their market-defined interests.For the purposes of this 
panel, there are a number of aspects to note in this description of 
neoliberalism.Selves are supposed to act in their own 
self-interest.Because contracts require this, selves are supposed to be 
stable entities with visible, knowable qualities that allow others to 
view these selves as predictable.And all social relationships hinge on a 
form of contract between stable and knowable entities in which the 
primary focus is balancing risk and responsibility equitably.

Neoliberal logics are supported by language ideologies that assume that 
a person’s voice unproblematically represents a unified ‘self’.Such 
language ideologies assume that even when someone is communicating on 
another’s behalf, the process is both transparent and direct, thereby 
erasing the labor of mediation. As a result, certain roles, under this 
neoliberal perspective, exhibit the “wrong” kind of agency, however 
essential they might actually be for social interaction.These include 
mediators of many kinds, such as those who seem to act in others’ 
interests and those whose work entails voicing or facilitating the words 
of others. This panel explores how different types of mediators through 
their communicative labor negotiate the paradoxical conditions of 
interacting in ways both in line with and counter to neoliberal 
expectations of agency.We are particularly interested in the strategies 
of voicing employed by those in a diverse set of mediating positions.We 
turn to translator-interpreters, Indian playback singers, and job 
recruiters to explore how these actors navigate the contradictory 
requirements of being both transparent vehicles for others’ words and 
visible, knowable subjects negotiating for their own interests (how, 
whether, and when they make these choices). Through ethnographic 
attention to the production and representation of voices in these 
contexts, we seek to understand how effects of transparency, immediacy, 
and authenticity are produced, and the kinds of affect, forms of agency, 
and social roles and relations that are generated through these 
mediating roles.

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