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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.