Susana Martínez Guillem

We Want Your Success! Hegemony, Materiality, and Latino in America

In this article we offer a detailed examination of CNNs documentary Latino in America and of the ways in which a particular group of viewers responded to it. Our goal is to show how we can explore the nature of hegemonic processes in a way that more fully incorporates the role of material reality in the reproduction of a particular social order. Thus, our analysis will shed light on how the material conditions of a specific segment of the Latino population interact with the dominant representations of this group in ways that need further exploration. As this analysis shows, a closer look at this interaction reveals that the embracement—or not—of the ideological messages embedded in a particular text is not only based on the rhetorical aspects of these messages, but also on the extent to which their implications are in consonance with the material needs, wants, and priorities of those interpellated by it.

The dialectics of multiculturalism: Constructing 'new citizens' in Spanish public broadcasting

This article reflects on the symbolic and material bases of multiculturalist ideology as it manifests itself in particular cultural practices taking place across the European Union (EU). To explore some of these dynamics, I focus my discussion on Babel, a Spanish public broadcasting production partially funded by the EU, which aims to promote intercultural dialogue through exposing viewers to different aspects of immigrants’ lives in Spain. The analysis highlights how, while explicitly endorsing multiculturalism and developing a pro-immigration stance, Babel’s stories also promote a restricted and restricting image of desirable immigrants. Thus, the show’s resignification efforts rely mostly on an implicit but systematic association between cultural similarity and economic productivity in its representations of acceptable immigrants. The article’s conclusion argues for the need to re-theorise the co-constitutive relationship between ‘cultural’ and ‘economic’ aspects of multiculturalist practices at large, as well as the specific shapes that they take in Western European societies.This article reflects on the symbolic and material bases of multiculturalist ideology as it manifests itself in particular cultural practices taking place across the European Union (EU). To explore some of these dynamics, I focus my discussion on Babel, a Spanish public broadcasting production partially funded by the EU, which aims to promote intercultural dialogue through exposing viewers to different aspects of immigrants’ lives in Spain. The analysis highlights how, while explicitly endorsing multiculturalism and developing a pro-immigration stance, Babel’s stories also promote a restricted and restricting image of desirable immigrants. Thus, the show’s resignification efforts rely mostly on an implicit but systematic association between cultural similarity and economic productivity in its representations of acceptable immigrants. The article’s conclusion argues for the need to re-theorise the co-constitutive relationship between ‘cultural’ and ‘economic’ aspects of multiculturalist practices at large, as well as the specific shapes that they take in Western European societies.

Constructing contexts, (re)defining immigrants: Mental models and social representations in immigration policy defense*:

This article examines two different instances of policy defense as a means to show how a socio-cognitive approach to contexts can help develop a dialectical account of the relationship between societal processes and our communicative practices. Based on such analysis, I argue that comparative analyses within a socio-cognitive theory of context can offer new insights into how, first of all, mental models control the process of discourse production and interpretation in important ways, and second, how they are intrinsically related to ideologically based understandings of particular groups and/or situations. Such an approach allows us to account for and explain the potential effectiveness of the discursive moves that emerge from this co-constitutive relationship between contexts and communicative practices.

EXCLUSIVE INCLUSION: EU integration discourse as regulating practice

This paper focuses on three different ‘Communications’ issued by the European Commission between 2007 and 2011 that inform, frame, and constitute contemporary European Union immigration policy. Drawing on a theoretical framework that calls attention to the embeddedness of cultural ideas and notions in economic dimensions of society, the analysis first emphasizes the naturalized link in the Communications between the need for integration and specific immigrants whose cultures are marked as fundamentally different. Second, it shows how lack of cultural integration is intrinsically connected in these documents to an economic understanding of ‘otherness’, since it is made salient as an obstacle in immigrants’ path toward upward mobility, and thus as a threat to social cohesion. This, I argue, creates an irresolvable paradox that positions undesirable immigrants as simultaneously in need of and ineligible for integration measures.This paper focuses on three different ‘Communications’ issued by the European Commission between 2007 and 2011 that inform, frame, and constitute contemporary European Union immigration policy. Drawing on a theoretical framework that calls attention to the embeddedness of cultural ideas and notions in economic dimensions of society, the analysis first emphasizes the naturalized link in the Communications between the need for integration and specific immigrants whose cultures are marked as fundamentally different. Second, it shows how lack of cultural integration is intrinsically connected in these documents to an economic understanding of ‘otherness’, since it is made salient as an obstacle in immigrants’ path toward upward mobility, and thus as a threat to social cohesion. This, I argue, creates an irresolvable paradox that positions undesirable immigrants as simultaneously in need of and ineligible for integration measures.

Going ‘global,’ (re)locating privilege: a journey into the borders of whiteness, foreignness, and performativity

In this article I draw on my personal experience of partially forced repositioning as a way to advance our understanding of the theoretical and practical contours of whiteness, foreignness, and performativity. In particular, I consider how specific aspects of our identities can get strategically redefined depending on the context where they operate, thus placing the transposed body at a constant risk of being excluded from certain privileges. I also bring foreignness to light as an organizing principle that (re)creates places for belonging and marginalization as it interacts with other dimensions of identity. From here, I propose to emphasize the incontrollable aspects of experience and thus expose the strategic attempts to protect privilege and also, and maybe more importantly, the limitations of such strategies. At a broader level, with this contribution I hope to turn a self-reflexive eye on the politics of language and/as method, and how different assumptions and expectations for particular kinds of writing styles may affect the possibilities for those whose first language is not English to make our voices heard.In this article I draw on my personal experience of partially forced repositioning as a way to advance our understanding of the theoretical and practical contours of whiteness, foreignness, and performativity. In particular, I consider how specific aspects of our identities can get strategically redefined depending on the context where they operate, thus placing the transposed body at a constant risk of being excluded from certain privileges. I also bring foreignness to light as an organizing principle that (re)creates places for belonging and marginalization as it interacts with other dimensions of identity. From here, I propose to emphasize the incontrollable aspects of experience and thus expose the strategic attempts to protect privilege and also, and maybe more importantly, the limitations of such strategies. At a broader level, with this contribution I hope to turn a self-reflexive eye on the politics of language and/as method, and how different assumptions and expectations for particular kinds of w...

Critical Discourse Studies and/in communication: theories, methodologies, and pedagogies at the intersections

ABSTRACT In this introductory essay, we interrogate the relationship between Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) and communication studies, ultimately arguing for a firmer cross-fertilization between the two. We start by tracing the events that led to this special issue as a way to document the relatively brief, scattered, but at the same time promising trajectories of CDS within communication scholarship. We then take a step back and outside of the discipline to locate different precursors, practitioners, and outlets that contributed to shaping a unique approach to sociodiscursive phenomena first labeled as Critical Discourse Analysis. Next, we identify the more recent, broadening turn toward CDS, and its implications in terms of theories, methods, and objects of study. Drawing on scholarship in communication studies and related disciplines, as well as on the contributions to this special issue, we end by reviewing different challenges and possibilities for the traversing trajectories of CDS and communication studies.

Podemos’ Performative Power: Space Struggles and/as Political Transformation

This chapter presents an analysis of Podemos as, first of all, an outcome of the shrinking space of privilege in post-crisis Spain and the social mobilizations that followed, and, second, a potential producer of a more democratic or “common” political culture through its different performative actions in institutional spaces. Drawing on theorizings of space as a structured and (re)structuring force that regulates broader social relations (Lefebvre 1991), I first discuss the intrinsic relation between Indignad@s’ particular uses of space, the development of a common social position for this social movement, and the emergence of Podemos as a political project. Then, I focus on Podemos’ ability to overcome the fixing trap of place, or the attaching of certain meanings to only a particular location, which was possible thanks to a further spatial “reterritorialization” (Deleuze and Guattari 1988) beyond the plaza, and the “streets” more generally. I argue that, through different performances of politics geared toward the reappropriation of institutional spaces such as Congress or Parliament, Podemos tried to challenge the dominant, unmarked—but equally performative—accepted practices that constitute these spaces through exclusion. Overall, although still in need of being further integrated as part of Podemos’ hybrid project, these powerful performances of politics can be seen as manifestations of cultural (re)production and potential political transformation.

“Am I a good [white] mother?” Mad men, bad mothers, and post(racial)feminism

ABSTRACT In this article we locate, interpret, and critique the figure of the “bad” white mother, focusing on the critically acclaimed AMC drama, Mad Men. Advancing feminist and postcolonial approaches to myth, we uncover a prevailing “white consciousness” that relies on racializing logics in, first of all, Mad Men’s representations of (white) motherhood through the character of Betty Draper, and second, public discussions of the show in academic and media outlets. Drawing on Black feminist thought, we propose that these discourses rely on and feed underlying assumptions that support post(racial)feminism—an ideological location that allows for the explicit embracement of “bad” mothering as a progressive, even transgressive act that, at the same time, implicitly relies on expectations for (good) mothering shaped by white privilege. This cross-pollination between postfeminism and whiteness, we argue, is especially important to engage, since it carries potentially limiting implications for our collective imagination about what anti-racist and feminist struggles should entail.

The edges of praxis: embracing constraints in (whiteness) theorizing

As a scholar who claims communication as her disciplinary home, and whiteness studies among her areas of expertise, I appreciate the opportunity to comment on Toyosaki’s ‘Praxis-Oriented Whiteness research’ (this volume), and thus directly join a stimulating and ever-evolving conversation on the different assumptions embedded in whiteness research within communication scholarship. Let me just begin by acknowledging the intellectual effort that lies behind so-called ‘theoretical’ essays, which I believe are getting increasingly harder to publish within contemporary dominant notions of ‘applied’ research in academia (see Hanitzsch 2013). In contrast to the prevailing – and arbitrary – separation between theory and practice (see Bourdieu 1992), I see the kind of conceptual mapping/tracing that Toyosaki offers as a necessary and very practical component of any healthy intellectual project, and of a critical project in particular. In short, envisioning and undertaking alternative, more socially just paths in research, teaching, and human activity as a whole cannot be done without examining the kinds of assumptions that guide our and others’ actions, within and outside of the academic world. That is why interventions like Toyosaki’s remain so important. Toyosaki deploys a meta-theoretical approach along the interlocking axes of ontological, epistemological, and axiological foundations in whiteness research. Such focus is certainly a useful way to identify, compare, and evaluate different theoretical and methodological traditions, whether we are trying to conceptually map a field (Craig 1999), a theory-method (Shi-xu 2015) or, as Tosoyaki proposes, a contemporary cultural keyword such as whiteness. Through meta-theory, Toyosaki provides a quite accessible and comprehensive guide for current and future researchers interested in influential work in whiteness studies that can enhance and be enhanced by communication studies. Moreover, examining underlying assumptions in whiteness research places Tosoyaki in a suitable position to question the paths that he considers to be limiting, while highlighting those that he sees as more valuable. The result of such inquiry is a call for what Toyosaki, elaborating on the work of other communication scholars, labels ‘praxis-oriented’ whiteness research, an approach that ‘conceptualizes our self-hoods as sites and mechanisms where whiteness exists as a social paradox, engages in complex analyses, labors toward racial justice, and writes ourselves into the stories to exist with others.’ A meta-theoretical essay, on the other hand, also complicates the task of the commentator quite a bit, since ‘going meta’ on a piece that is already taking a step back and above the literature can easily take us into a quite abstract – and perhaps tedious – terrain.