Sean Phelan

THE DISCOURSES OF NEOLIBERAL HEGEMONY: THE CASE OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC

The Irish Republics economic success story has been simultaneously regarded as antithetical to and indicative of neoliberal hegemony. The question of the neoliberal pedigree of the Irish case is explored here from the perspective of mediatized representations of political economy. The papers argument is advanced in three distinct stages. First, it outlines a theoretical and methodological rationale for the analysis itself. Second, it formulates a summary account of neoliberalism as discourse(s) and ideology, introducing a key analytical distinction between ‘transparent’ and ‘euphemized’ neoliberal discourses. Third, it presents an empirical overview of how neoliberal assumptions are articulated through mediatized representations of political economy. The article shows how the ‘Celtic Tiger’ can be understood as a case of neoliberal hegemony, as long as it is recognised that neoliberalism is hegemonically constituted through a plurality of (inter)discursive forms and rhetorical strategies. In addition, the paper highlights the constitutive role of media representation, especially the media rhetoric of Irish political leaders, in the production and reproduction of an Irish neoliberalism.

Discourse Theory and Critical Media Politics: An Introduction

The signifier discourse is hardly an unfamiliar one in critical media, communication, and cultural studies. As a focal point of theoretical reflection, it may even be considered a bit passe — the residue of an earlier preoccupation with signification and language that has either been superseded by more fashionable theoretical vocabularies, or exposed for its inadequate attention to “real world” material concerns (Cloud, 1994; Philo & Miller, 2000). This objection could apply, in particular, to a discourse theoretical tradition whose foundational moment was the 1985 publication of Laclau and Mouffe’s (2001), Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. The objection might be: “but hasn’t all this ground been covered already?” “Given the range of already available texts,2 do we really need another book about discourse in media and communication studies?” Our response to these objections is, naturally enough, an affirmative one: yes, another book about discourse is needed, one with a specific theoretical focus that systematically explores what we see as the underdeveloped relationship between post-Marxist discourse theory and what this collection calls critical media politics.

THE “RADICAL”, THE “ACTIVIST” AND THE HEGEMONIC NEWSPAPER ARTICULATION OF THE AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND FORESHORE AND SEABED CONFLICT

Popular assessments of the media treatment of the foreshore and seabed conflict point to a picture largely consistent with the well-established argument that mainstream Aotearoa New Zealand media function as hegemonic agents of the dominant Pakeha culture. This paper reflects on the hegemonic representation of the 2003/4 conflict over the “ownership” of the countrys foreshore and seabed by examining specifically how two ideologically potent signifiers, “activist” and “radical”, were articulated in a newspaper corpus of over one million words. Our theoretical and methodological approach is structured around a combination of macro- and micro-textual discourse analysis approaches. We justify our particular empirical focus by arguing that the controversy associated with the figures of the (predominantly Maori) radical and the activist can be regarded as both symptomatic and constitutive of wider race relations antagonisms. Our analysis examines the media-political significance of textual presences and absences and presents an overview of how all relevant lexical variants of activist and radical were articulated in our newspaper corpus. We also discuss the political significance of our findings, partly by briefly considering additional empirical evidence of how Maori identities were represented in the corpus.

Reinvigorating ideology critique: between trust and suspicion:

The concept of ideology has historically been a master signifier of critique in media and communication studies. However, the concept’s status has been decentred, to the extent that Downey, Titley and Toynbee recently argued – in this journal – ‘there’s no ideology critique’. I affirm their call for a reinvigoration of ideology critique in media studies, although I question the force of their claim that contemporary media researchers are indifferent to ideology. I also argue for a theoretically open-ended conception of ideology that interrogates the default ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ of traditional ideology critique.

INTRODUCTION: Post-Marxist discourse theory and critical political economy

The basic story is already well known. In their 1985 book Hegemony and socialist strategy, Laclau and Mouffe (2001) claim a radical break with those Marxist theories grounded in economic essentialism in which economic forms and contradictions are identified as the primary historical determiner of social transformations and identities. Instead, they insist on the ontological primacy of ‘the political’, interrogating the positioning of politics, culture, ideology, and discourse as epiphenomenal and superstructural. They named their reflections as post-Marxist discourse theory, recognizing how their approach draws upon certain ‘intuitions’ within Marxism while distancing themselves from others. Laclau consistently emphasizes discourse theory’s status as a ‘social ontology’, developing upon a more general ontological turn in critical theory. Drawing on different post-structuralist, phenomenological and Marxist traditions, discourse theory embraces an ontology of radical contingency that emphasizes the central role of hegemonic and discursive practices in the constitution, contestation and potential transformation of all social systems. Laclau maintains that ‘the economy’ is just as discursive and hegemonic as any other system, interrogating a political economy figuration of the economy as a transhistorical object structured by its own endogenous logics – namely class antagonisms and the capitalist relation of production – to which all other political logics are subordinate. As he observed in a 2010 interview: ‘What you will definitely find in my work is the assertion that the economic level of society is not a self-contained entity operating as an infrastructure; that the coherence it reaches is, as with everything else, hegemonically constructed’ (Laclau, in Glynos & Stavrakakis, 2010, p. 242). The papers in this themed section revisit the relationship between discourse theory and political economy, asking what discourse theory might offer to an analysis of ‘the economy’ and ‘capitalism’? Our four authors take different approaches, broadly distinguishable in the weight they attach to the question of ontology. Some pragmatically combine discourse theory with political economy approaches, largely bracketing out questions of ontology and undertaking discourse theoretical analyses of particular empirical issues alongside conventional critical political economy analysis. Others insist that the question needs to begin with ontological-level reflection on the relationship between discourse theory and political economy, otherwise we run into the problem of theoretical and methodological ‘eclecticism’ (Glynos & Howarth, 2007), mixing a range of approaches with different ontological conceptions of economy, discourse, and politics. Read together, the four papers invite reflection about the relative importance of ontological questions in operationalizing cross-theoretical social analysis. Do we need to follow Laclau’s lead and begin by clarifying our ontology, articulating it consistently in our empirical analysis? Or, to put it glibly, should we relax about ontological questions Critical Discourse Studies, 2014 Vol. 11, No. 3, 255–256, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2014.916088

The Media as the Neoliberalized Sediment: Articulating Laclau’s Discourse Theory with Bourdieu’s Field Theory

The work of Laclau and Bourdieu can, in one sense, be opposed. If Laclau can be characterized as a political theorist who is antagonistic to a “sociologistic descriptivism” (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001, p. 2), Bourdieu can be described as a sociologist who is antagonistic to abstract theory. Laclau (1990) criticizes sociology for occluding the political logic of the social, while Bourdieu (1990) reproaches scholastic articulations of theory for disparaging a positivistic interest in the empirical. To frame the relationship between Laclau and Bourdieu in these blanket terms is simplistic, and we should question to what extent the work of either can be cast in the other’s generic projection. Nonetheless, to stylize their differences in discourse theoretical terms, we can say that while Laclau’s work has been preoccupied with emphasizing the “radical contingency” of social practices, Bourdieu has focused more purposefully on understanding their “sedimentation” and stickiness (Glynos & Howarth, 2007).

The Politics of Interfield Antagonisms

Bourdieu’s field theory has been used to analyse the internal dynamics of the journalistic field, and to compare journalistic fields in different national contexts. However, studies of the power relations between the journalistic field and other social fields have been less common, despite the theory’s general assumptions about “the media’s” capacity to shape the coordinates and subjectivities of agents elsewhere. This article explores the interfield antagonisms between the journalistic field and visual arts field that followed the nomination of the artist collective “et al.” as New Zealand’s representative at the 2005 Venice Biennale. We focus on a particular journalistic interview where the different subjectivities of both fields encountered each other directly. Using conversation and discourse analysis as methodological supplements, we highlight how the journalist’s rhetorical strategies enacted a logic of symbolic domination which decried the perceived unwillingness of the artists to render themselves accountable to the New Zealand “public”. At the same time, we show how et al.’s counter-response politicized journalistic conventions normally taken for granted, and enabled an expression of artistic autonomy against the symbolic violence and naturalized authority of the journalistic field.

MEDIA CRITIQUE, AGONISTIC RESPECT AND THE (IM)POSSIBILITY OF A “REALLY QUITE PRETENTIOUS” LIMINAL SPACE

This essay reflects on the blogosphere reaction to a journal article of mine about the relationship between journalists and media academics in Aotearoa New Zealand. Much of the response reenacted the original essays argument about journalistic antagonisms towards critical theoretical scholarship. I resituate the reaction in terms of the original essays objectives, and discuss the chaotic nature of these academic field/journalistic field exchanges. I argue that it would be a mistake to simply dismiss the blogosphere attacks, because that would merely reinscribe my identity in the blind antagonistic frame I had originally critiqued. Instead, revisiting aspects of the original essay that were subsequently ignored, I elaborate on the implications of William Connollys call for an ethos of “agonistic respect” both for the articulation of an engaged counter-response and the interrogation of political and cultural antagonisms more generally.

The Journalistic Habitus, Neoliberal(ized) Logics, and the Politics of Public Education

This article examines the relationship between neoliberalism and journalism as it relates to the articulation of a marketized education agenda. We examine the case of Campbell Brown, the former CNN anchor, who, after leaving journalism in 2010, reinvented herself as a high-profile education campaigner from 2012 to 2016, asserting an identity that was hostile to trade unions and supportive of charter schools. Brown initially represented her advocacy as a departure from journalism, though the rationale changed in 2015 when she co-founded The 74, an educational news website that promised to reconcile a commitment to journalism and advocacy. We analyse the significance of Brown’s case from a field theory perspective, especially in how it captures the inter-field dynamics of journalistic power and highlights Brown’s specific ability to convert her media capital into a form of cultural capital to speak about educational issues. We then examine the resonances between a journalistic habitus and neoliberal logics, as illustrated in this case by the discursive importance of appeals to transparency and accountability to both journalism and neoliberal governance. We end by briefly reflecting on the general significance of our analysis, partly with reference to Keane’s concept of “monitory democracy” and Crouch’s concept of “post-democracy”.

Conclusion: The Possibility of a Radical Media Politics

This book offered a theoretical account of the relationship between neoliberalism, media and the political, supported by empirical analyses from different contexts. I focused on critically understanding the sedimented condition of neoliberalized media regimes, endeavouring to illuminate aspects and dimensions not captured in summary critical nar-ratives about neoliberalism or in summary claims about “the neoliberal media”. I emphasized the dialectical interplay between neoliberal logics and other discursive logics, interrogating the image of a monolithic neoliberalism that simply imposes itself on other domains and practices. The strategic intention was to identify the sites of a cultural politics within the immanent rationality of neoliberalized regimes, elucidating objects and logics that might be politically acted on in the name of a radically different kind of media and political culture.