A Minuteman in the White House: Performing Spectacle, Mobilizing Political Affect, and Gendering Vulnerability in the United States

Lechuga, Michael

doi:10.1080/07491409.2017.1369336

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Violence has been a staple since the border's inception, rising and falling in different political climates as concerns over who belongs on either side have often materialized through aggression (Yoxall, 2006). While not new, Donald Trump's efforts to link a variety of crimes to undocumented migration using the Parsons and Riva Comparative Migration Studies (2024) 12:13 notions of danger, innocence, and invasion heightened latent anxieties among many US citizens (Lechuga, 2017). The effect of this rhetoric cannot be understated.…”

Section: Framing the Bordermentioning

confidence: 99%

Innocence and danger at the border: migrants, “Bad” mothers, and the nation’s protectors

Parsons,

Riva

2024

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Media and political discourse in the USA often depict migration as an invasion and people who cross borders as criminals dangerous to the nation. Through ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two places on the USA-Mexico Southern border, we want to analyze how invasion narratives influence practices on-the-ground. We first explore how these narratives inform the views of a border militia who see themselves as protectors of the nation and understand people who cross borders as threats. We then argue that migrant women’s presence in areas where the militia operates disrupts the dominant narrative that defines migrants as dangerous, as militia members come to understand migrant women as victims of the Cartel. Despite their innocence, to maintain the narrative’s consistency, militia members still consider migrant women criminals for crossing the border “illegally.” Finally, we move on to explore the materiality of these xenophobic discourses by examining how migrant women are mistreated at a family immigration detention center. Using the militias as an example, we highlight why political narratives circulate and have meaning for individuals and how discourses have material consequences.

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Section: Framing the Bordermentioning

confidence: 99%

Innocence and danger at the border: migrants, “Bad” mothers, and the nation’s protectors

Parsons,

Riva

2024

CMS

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“…Building on the idea of poststructuralism which understands that our bodies exist in the political world, scholars in affect studies have critiqued that there has not been enough discussion on the politics of bodies (Ahmed, 2014;Brennan, 2004). Simultaneously, contemporary scholarship has examined a political dimension to affect (i.e., the political power of affect), further complicating the conversations of affect (Clough, 2008;Glapka, 2019;Lara et al, 2017;Lechuga, 2017). For example, Glapka (2019) examined the complex relationships between affect, discourse, and power by analyzing the qualitative interview data, and showcased the discursive practices of affect and subjectivity that "the embodied becomes social and the social becomes embodied, what's personal turns out shared and what's collective is made one's own" (p. 616).…”

Section: Affect Affective Economy and Performativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As Protevi (2009) illuminated, "affect is inherently political: bodies are part of an ecosocial matrix of other bodies, affecting them and being affected by them; affect is part of the basic constitution of bodies politic" (p. 50; see also, Lechuga, 2017). In this vein, making sense of how bodies move and think requires an extensive understanding of the political affect in-between an individual and group act.…”

Section: Affect Affective Economy and Performativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“Yellow Perils,” Revived: Exploring Racialized Asian/American Affect and Materiality Through Hate Discourse over the COVID-19 Pandemic

Kimura

2021

jhs

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The goal of this essay is to explore what kind of hate is produced against Asian bodies in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. By centering Asian/American affect and materiality -marginalized voices, narratives, and feelings of Asian/Americans as affective-performative texts, this essay attends to critique the historical continuum of racial discrimination against Asian/Americans (i.e., yellow peril) and advocate for social justice, equality, and inclusion in the U.S. Overall, I argue that Asian/American bodies are both physiologically and ideologically desensitized, dehumanized, and weaponized as the revival of yellow perils over the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, this essay highlights the possibility of adding affective and performative lenses in Critical Intercultural Communication research, exploring the politics of Asian/American bodies and the hate discourse as a case study for further academic conversations in Asian/American scholarship in Communication.

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“…Its stated aims and tactics were akin to the UCP's; in response to a perceived danger, groups of organized citizens patrolled the border armed with personal firearms and contacted near US Customs and Border Patrol Agents when they suspected unsanctioned border crossings. The Minutemen vigilantes did not obscure their vigilantism, but instead purposefully drew press coverage and public attention to themselves as a form of effective political theater, which ultimately had effect on national legislation (Lechuga, 2017). Scholar Leo R. Chavez explains this phenomenon with the Foucauldian function of political spectacle: above all, visible political violence allows power to "deploy its pomp in public" (Foucault, 1977, pp.…”

Section: Vigilante Violence and Vantagementioning

confidence: 99%

Walls and Cows: Social Media, Vigilante Vantage, and Political Discourse

Ward

2020

Social Media + Society

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Vigilante groups in the United States and India have used social media to distribute their content and publicize violent spectacles for political purposes. This essay will tackle the spectacle of vigilante lynchings, abduction, and threats as images of vigilante violence are spread online in support of specific candidates, state violences, and election discourse. It is important to understand the impact of not only these vigilante groups, but understand the communicative spectacle of their content. Using Leo R. Chavez’s understanding of early 2000s vigilante action as spectacle in service of social movements, this essay extends the analysis to modern vigilante violence online content used as dramatic political rhetoric in support of sitting administrations. Two case studies on modern vigilante violence provide insight into this phenomenon are as follows: (1) Vigilante nativist militia groups across the United States in support of border militarization have kidnapped migrants in the Southwest desert, documenting these incidents to show support for the Trump Administration and building of a border wall and (2) vigilante mobs in India have circulated videos and media documenting lynchings of so-called “cow killers”; these attacks target Muslims in the light of growing Hindu Nationalist sentiment and political movement in the country. Localized disinformation and personal video allow vigilante content to spread across social media to recruit members for militias, as well as incite quick acts of mob violence. Furthermore, these case studies display how the social media livestreams and video allow representations of violence to become attention-arresting visual acts of political discourse.

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A Minuteman in the White House: Performing Spectacle, Mobilizing Political Affect, and Gendering Vulnerability in the United States

Cited by 7 publications

References 2 publications

Innocence and danger at the border: migrants, “Bad” mothers, and the nation’s protectors

Innocence and danger at the border: migrants, “Bad” mothers, and the nation’s protectors

“Yellow Perils,” Revived: Exploring Racialized Asian/American Affect and Materiality Through Hate Discourse over the COVID-19 Pandemic

Walls and Cows: Social Media, Vigilante Vantage, and Political Discourse

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