Search results

This chapter uses critical race theories to interpret Obama-related content and changing discourse patterns on discussion boards maintained by a pro-gun, overwhelmingly white, male, and conservative virtual community. Beginning during the 2008 presidential primary season and continuing through Barack Obama's election as president, our analysis focused on the proliferation of negative “nicknames” (“Obamathets”) that were posted in race-oriented discussion threads over 16 months. We identified three types of frequently voiced Obamathets: those indicating general dislike, political disdain, or racial derision, and we analyzed usage patterns – which types of Obamathets appeared and at which times. Our results revealed a changing state of mind – annoyance to extreme anger – among posters whose sense of racial threat seemed increasingly palpable as Obama approached, and eventually won, the presidency. Over time, posts increasingly included racially derisive terms whose incidence intensified after the election and remained high; racially derisive terms overtook terms of general dislike (that had been more popular) as well as terms of political disdain several months into our analysis. Because posters tended to be more openly libertarian in orientation, we doubt our findings would generalize to the majority of conservative whites; however, our findings probably shed considerable light on activist elements among conservatives, including the “Tea Party” movement. Moreover, capturing sentiments expressed in a semiprivate venue – virtual community discussion boards – probably allowed us to uncover less censored racial sentiment (or racetalk) than is typical when social scientists solicit racial opinions from whites in face-to-face interviews, when many may omit racially hostile thoughts to appear more racially sensitive to researchers.

Bureaucratic hierarchy, as the hallmark of the modern organization, has been remarkably resilient in the face of increasingly pervasive attacks on its fundamental value and usefulness. We investigate the reasons for this from a cultural, particularly psychoanalytic, perspective – one that sees hierarchy's perpetuation not in terms of the efficacy of its instrumental potential, but rather in the values that are culturally sedimented within it. We argue that hierarchy reflects longings for a pure heavenly order that can never be attained yet remains appealing as a cultural fantasy psychologically gripping individuals in its beatific vision. To tease out this cultural logic we examine two representations of it in popular culture – the U.S. television comedy The Office (2005–) and comedian Will Farrell's impersonation of George W. Bush (2009). These examples illustrate the strength of bureaucratic hierarchy as an affective cultural ideal that retains its appeal even whilst being continually the subject of derision. We suggest that this cultural ideal is structured through a ‘fantasmatic narrative’ revolving around the desire for a spiritualized sense of sovereignty; a desire that is always undermined yet reinforced by its failures to manifest itself concretely in practice. Our central contribution is in relating hierarchy to sovereignty, suggesting that hierarchy persists because of an unquenched and unquenchable desire for spiritual perfection not only amongst leaders, but also amongst those they lead.

In the binary sex-segregated space of professional sports, sex-gender diversity is met with suspicion, derision and exclusion. In the United States, along with widespread anti-trans policies at various societal levels, legislations and regulations are being pushed to limit or eliminate transgender athletes from competing in all levels of sports. However, little scholarship has considered the implications of the presence of nonbinary athletes, those who identify outside the spectrum of man and woman, beyond the conversation of a ‘third gender’ category in sport. In this chapter, I seek to examine how nonbinary athletes embody disobedience by challenging the binary categorization of sex-gender within professional sports. I explore the racialized embodiment of sex and gender in professional women's sports, specifically WNBA player Layshia Clarendon. I explore how disobedience is employed to incite resistance against the narrow sex-gender categories that are forced upon athletes. Finally, I argue that embodied disobedience provides a key pathway for nonbinary athletes to undermine the regulatory nature of sex-gender categorization in sport. Particularly, nonbinary athletes may seek medical and social forms of gender affirmation, while simultaneously embodying disobedience by continuing to actively participate in professional sports categories in which they may not neatly fit.

Michael Holquist (1990), one of the commentators on Mikhail Bakhtin’s monumental work, stated flatly that “human existence is dialogue,” and Ivana Markova (2003) declared that “dialogism is the ontology of humanity.” Bakhtin (1985;1986) himself said that such dialogues are conducted by using “speech genres.” From another angle Kenneth Burke asked, “What is involved when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it?” and claimed – and showed – that this question can be best answered by using what he called the “grammar of motives,” which consisted of a hexad of terms: act, attitude, scene, agent, agency, and purpose. In this chapter, I examine, by using various examples, how the Burkean grammar is used in the construction of one speech genre or the other to achieve rhetorically effective dialogic communication.