[Linganth] Seeking panel participants for SLA2020: Responsibility and Evidence in Late Capitalist Discourse

[Aurora Donzelli]

Dear All,
Joseph Sung-Yul Park and I are organizing a panel for the next SLA2020 meeting in Boulder, Colorado. Please email us a 250-word abstract no later than 11/25.

 best,

Aurora and Joseph


Responsibility and Evidence in Late Capitalist Discourse

Organizers:
Aurora Donzelli, Sarah Lawrence College, NY adonzelli at slc.edu<mailto:adonzelli at slc.edu>
Joseph Sung-Yul Park, National University of Singapore, Singapore ellpjs at nus.edu.sg<mailto:ellpjs at nus.edu.sg>

Our contemporary moment is often represented as marked by the progressive extension of market logics to every domain of human existence and interaction (Brown 2003, 2006; Cruikshank 1993; Martin 2000; Rose 1990; etc.). Key to this process has been the institution of novel paradigms for determining moral and epistemic standards of conduct. The ideal neoliberal subject is imagined to be engaged in the moral project of maximizing the value of one’s human capital, as well as a constant evidencing of one’s engagement with such responsibility of self-development. Institutional, technological, and political economic configurations constantly monitor and assess individuals in these terms, guiding them towards internalization of such discourse through self-modulation. A growing ethnographic literature has thus shown how the contemporary world is characterized by the proliferation of evidentiary regimes based on ideals of transparency and moral standards pivoting on notions of accountability and individual entrepreneurialism (see for, example, Cavanaugh 2016; Gershon 2011, Matza 2009; Shore and Wright 2003; Strathern 2000; Urciuoli 2008; West and Sanders 2003). But we still lack a fuller account of how these larger discursive formations impact the grain of everyday life, structuring our daily encounters and interactions. Drawing on the seminal volume edited by Hill and Irvine (1993) and extending its insights into contemporary political economic context, this panel explores of how situated language use participates in producing the specific notions of knowledge and agency that characterize the late capitalist present. Our goal is to “turn the tools of linguistic anthropology” to further our understanding of how neoliberal notions of responsibility and evidence are both produced and challenged through actual instances of discursive activity (Hill and Irvine 1993: 3). Specific questions addressed by contributions may include:


-       What kinds of discursive practices and styles come to be valued as transparent, moral, and responsible under neoliberalism, and by what semiotic processes?

-       How do neoliberal models of responsibility and evidence affect contemporary linguistic and semiotic styles of political self-presentation and participation?

-       What do debates on fake news and (un-)accountable political practices reveal about the new moral and epistemic standards of our times?

-       How do the moral and epistemic paradigms of our present shape linguistic practices in the workplace? How do they affect contemporary forms of material production and semiotic circulation of commodities, though certification protocols, (re-)branding strategies, and new technologies of the working self? How are they resisted and subverted through specific patterns of communicative behavior?

-        How do shifting ideologies about ideal displays and enactments of responsibility, agency, and desire lead to new models of ideal personhood?

-       What new evidentiary regimes do conditions of late capitalism, including those of precarity, surveillance, and inequality, represent?

-       How do neoliberal modes of governance construct different populations as (ir)responsible, (im)moral, (un)truthful, or (un)trustworthy?


References cited

Brown, Wendy
2003 Neo-liberalism and the end of liberal democracy. Theory & Event, 7(1).
---              2006 American Nightmare Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and De-Democratization. Political theory, 34(6), 690-714.
Cavanaugh, Jillian R
2016 "Documenting subjects: Performativity and audit culture in food production in northern Italy." American Ethnologist 43.4 (2016): 691-703.
Cruikshank, Barbara
1993 Revolutions within: self-government and self-esteem. Economy and Society, 22(3), 327-344.
Gershon, Ilana.

2011 Neoliberal agency. Current Anthropology 52(4):537-555.
Hill, Jane H., and Judith T. Irvine
                  1993 Responsibility and evidence in oral discourse. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.
Martin, Emily.
2000 Mind‐Body Problems. American Ethnologist, 27(3), 569-590.

Matza, Tomas

2009 Moscow's Echo: Technologies of the Self, Publics, and Politics on the Russian Talk Show. Cultural Anthropology 24(3):489-522.
Rose, Nikolas
1990 Governing the soul: the shaping of the private self. Taylor & Frances/Routledge.
Shore, Cris, and S. Wright, (eds.)
2003 Anthropology of policy: Perspectives on governance and power. Routledge.
Strathern, Marilyn, (ed.)
2000 Audit cultures: anthropological studies in accountability, ethics, and the academy. Psychology Press.
Urciuoli, Bonnie
2008 Skills and selves in the new workplace. American Ethnologist 35(2):211-228.
West, Harry G., and Todd Sanders, (eds.)
2003 Transparency and conspiracy: ethnographies of suspicion in the new world order. Duke University Press.




Aurora Donzelli

Associate Professor of Anthropology
Sarah Lawrence College
1 Mead Way
Bronxville, NY 10708 USA
E-mail: adonzelli at sarahlawrence.edu<mailto:adonzelli at sarahlawrence.edu>


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