Branded Bodies, Rhetoric, and the Neoliberal Nation-State, by Dr. Jennifer Wingard, explores how neoliberal economics has affected the rhetoric of the media and politics, and how in very direct, material ways it harms the bodies of some of the United States' most vulnerable occupants. The book is written at a moment when the promise of the liberal nation state, in which the government purports to care for its citizens through social welfare programs financed by state funds, is eroding. Currently, state policies are defined by neoliberal governmentality, a form which privileges privatization and individual personal responsibility. Instead of the promise of citizenship and the protections that come with it, or "the American Dream" to use a more common euphemism, the state uses certain bodies that will never be accepted as citizens as an underclass in service of capital (think "Guest Worker Programs"). And those underclassed "bodies" are identified through branding.In order to demonstrate just how damaging branding has become, Wingard offers readings of key pieces of legislation on immigration and GLBT rights and their media reception from the past twenty years. By showing how brands are assembled to create affective threats, Branded Bodies, Rhetoric, and the Neoliberal Nation-State articulates how dangerous the branding of bodies has become and offers rhetorical strategies that can repair the damage to bodies caused by political branding. Branded Bodies, then, is an intervention into the rhetorical practices of the nation-state. It attempts to clarify how the nation state uses brands to forward its claims of equality and freedom all the while condemning those who do not "fit in" to particular categories valued by the neoliberal state.
Branded Bodies, Rhetoric, and the Neoliberal Nation-State, by Dr. Jennifer Wingard, explores how neoliberal economics has affected the rhetoric of the media and politics, and how in very direct, material ways it harms the bodies of some of the United States¿ most vulnerable occupants. Wingard explains how the state uses certain bodies that will never be accepted as citizens as an underclass in service of capital, and explores how those underclassed "bodies" are identified through branding. By showing how brands are assembled to create affective threats, this book articulates how dangerous the branding of bodies has become and offers rhetorical strategies that can repair the damage to bodies caused by political branding.
AcknowledgmentsPreface: Branding Bodies: Assembling Affective ResponsesThe Work of Branding BodiesChapter One: Othering and Branding: Assembling Neoliberal IdentitiesWhy Branding?Neoliberalism as Exception: The Private Made PublicFrom Other-others to Brands: Commodifying BodiesAffective Branding: Bodies Dissolve into the Nation-StateRhetorical Assemblage The work of Branding BodiesChapter Two: Branding the Family: U.S. Protectionsism as the Tie that BindsBranding the Nation: It's All in the FamilyThe Good Citizen/The Good FamilyBranding of Protection: The Law of the FamilyMediating the Family: An Equal Opportunity BrandFamilies, Communities, and Nations: The Intensity of Post-9/11 DiscourseChapter Three: (Dis)Embodying Protection: Branding in the ICE AgeThe Right to Assemblage: Laura's Phone CallAssembling the "War on Terror": Post-9/11's Branding of TerrorAssembling Protection: The Development of ICEAssembling the Nation: Complicating the Citizen/Non-citizen DivideAssembling Consumers: Selling ICE as the Brand of ProtectionChapter Four: "José Padilla" and "Osama Bin Laden": Material Consequences ofBranding BodiesTerrorism, José Padilla, and Osama bin Laden: Or How We Lost Our HumanityPadilla: (Dis)Assembling the ThreatRacial Profiling: Defining Enemy CombatantsOsama bin Laden: The Face of a MovementThe Assassination of Osama bin Laden by the Coward U.S. ProtectionismBare Life: The Neoliberal Nation-State is Neither Gone nor ForgottenChapter Five: From Branding to Bodies: (Re)Assembling the WorkerBranding the Worker: Labor in Neoliberal TimesWhy the Worker Works: The Privatization of Public ServiceWorker as Mobilized Body: How GLBT Bodies Became Workers in aPost-DOMA WorldWorker as "Good" Family: Defining Citizenship and Humanity through WorkWorking an Issue: The Worker as Transnational ActorAssembling Bodies: A Call for Rhetorical ActionBibliography/ReferencesIndex