Neoliberal Style, the American Re-Generation, and Ecological Jeremiad in Thomas Friedman's “Code Green”

Singer, Ross

doi:10.1080/17524031003775646

Cited by 27 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 33 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…As Zinke lays out the means of regaining certain Americans' "chosen" or "exceptional" status, he therefore advocates for increased domestic production of energy. He frames this argument as the "reasonable" approach, as seen with other neoliberal discourses (Singer, 2010;Schneider et al, 2016), evidencing his claims using the prophetic vision that he has gained from being in the military and concludes with America's righteousness. He claims that other countries have little or no regulation, making their production much less environmentally friendly:…”

Section: Energy Dominance and The Promise Of The Neoliberal Covenantmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…The evils demonstrate the need to renew the American covenant and to restore the principles of the past so that the promised bright future can become a reality. (Murphy, 1990, p. 403) In addition to political and presidential address, the jeremiad has been employed in environmental rhetoric (Opie and Elliot, 1996): Dr. Seuss's The Lorax (Wolfe, 2008), Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth (Rosteck and Frentz, 2009), the environmental apocalyptic movie The Day After Tomorrow (Salvador and Norton, 2011), Reverend Billy's environmental discourse (Kaylor, 2013), and Thomas Friedman's "Code Green" (Singer, 2010). The jeremiad's frequent invocation in environmental discourse works to persuade audiences that while they have been given a healthy, sustaining environment, their behavior (overconsumption, pollution, and greed) has created a calamity that can only be rectified by humans changing their ways.…”

Section: Energy Covenant Renewalmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Energy Covenant: Energy Dominance and the Rhetoric of the Aggrieved

Schneider

Peeples

2018

Front. Commun.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Trump Administration has adopted "energy dominance" as its guiding ideology for energy policy, marking a notable shift from decades of "energy security" rhetoric. This paper analyzes how Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke, one of the administration's key spokespeople for energy dominance, uses "energy covenant renewal" to frame the importance of energy dominance for the conservative base. Covenant renewal is a modified form of the jeremiad; Zinke uses it to unite conservative identities around energy politics and policies. Energy dominance thus invites those who feel aggrieved under Obama administration regulatory policy and the multicultural identity politics of the left to renew their commitment to fossil fuels, American exceptionalism, and a restored social order and privilege.inTrODUcTiOn On September 29, 2017, Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, was hosted by the conservative organization the Heritage Foundation, where he gave his first major policy address titled: "A Vision for American Energy Dominance. " In this speech, Zinke outlines a vision for how the Department of the Interior (DOI) can aid in reversing decades of "American energy dependence. " The speech received media attention for how Zinke began it-he provided a lengthy defense of his own use of non-commercial flights, relevant because Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price had just been ousted from the Trump Administration for the same action (Adragna, 2017). What received less popular attention, however, and what is especially important about the speech, was its substance: Zinke's explication of the Trump administration's new approach to energy policy, known as "energy dominance. " We focus on that substance in this paper.We examine this speech because it is one of the more complete statements addressing energy policy to have emerged from the often-chaotic messaging apparatus of the first-year Trump administration. It also comes from one of its key spokespeople. Zinke, along with Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Rick Perry, Secretary of the Department of Energy, are the primary mouthpieces for "energy dominance. " We use rhetorical analysis to demonstrate that energy dominance not only draws on previous, familiar energy and political discourses but also departs from them in ways that have significance for how conservative identity politics are playing out in this political moment. This analysis is therefore in conversation with other types of energy communication work that focuses on how legacy energy systems resist change, consolidate power, and construct identity (see Endres et al., 2016).

show abstract

Section: Energy Dominance and The Promise Of The Neoliberal Covenantmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Energy Covenant Renewalmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Energy Covenant: Energy Dominance and the Rhetoric of the Aggrieved

Schneider

Peeples

2018

Front. Commun.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The ideological project of neoliberalism “normatively constructs and interpellates individuals as rationally calculating creatures whose moral autonomy is measured by their capacity to provide for their own needs and service their own ambitions” (p. 42). Singer (2010) characterizes neoliberal rhetoric as “a political formation and repertoire of conventions emphasizing cost-benefit calculations, the human faculty of choice, perpetual modification amidst global change, citizenship as value production, and social order as a free market commodity” (p. 136). The frame of sport serves as a particularly efficacious vessel for neoliberal rhetoric due to the former’s consecrated articulations of competition, hard work, and domination with value production and personal achievement.…”

Section: Media Articulation and Neoliberal Rhetoricmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Neoliberal Disciplining of LeBron James and Kevin Durant: Sports Media Discourse on NBA Free Agency as Ideological Critique

Foy

2020

Journal of Sport and Social Issues

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Through content analysis of sports media commentary focusing on the high-profile free agencies of NBA stars LeBron James and Kevin Durant, the author demonstrates how commercial sports media discourse responding to these critical exigencies strategically reinforces neoliberal ideology and parlays its disciplinary rhetoric into a derogatory ideological critique of James, Durant, and their contemporaries. The analysis demonstrates how media discourse surrounding James and Durant covertly but significantly reinforces cultural myths of rugged individualism, self-sufficiency, and competition as concomitant with success and self-worth while exalting idealized constructions of the prior generation of basketball icons, particularly Michael Jordan, whose mythic self-reliance is metonymic of an influx of nostalgic discourse which framed today’s players as constitutionally inferior to the stars of the 1980s and 1990s.

show abstract

“…Conceptualized as a political formation and repertoire of rhetorical conventions that idealize and foreground a free and rational market of apolitical producers and consumers (Singer, ), neoliberalism absorbs and relegates to the background that which threatens it. According to Hay (), “neoliberal” captures “historical category as rhetorical strategy”; that is, a rhetorical effort “to redefine the role of the State” (p. 200).…”

Section: Backgrounding and Neoliberal Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

Neoliberal Backgrounding, the Meatless Monday Campaign, and the Rhetorical Intersections of Food, Nature, and Cultural Identity

Singer

2016

Communication, Culture & Critique

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article offers a critical rhetorical ecofeminist analysis of the Meatless Monday campaign, a U.S.‐based meat reduction initiative focused on public health and the environment. By examining the campaign's online discourse, the study sheds light on vegetarian advocacy defined by an apolitical small‐steps strategy and identifies constraints on the campaign's significant empowerment potential. Extending past scholarship on how some vegetarian discourses resist and reproduce meat‐eating culture's hegemonic norms of gender, race/ethnicity, class, and human–nonhuman relations, I develop and demonstrate what I call the critique of neoliberal backgrounding as an intersectional ecofeminist heuristic. I conclude that the campaign should address the meaningful consequences that its affirmation of neoliberalism has for its targeted areas of concern and for interconnected societal problems.

show abstract

Neoliberal Style, the American Re-Generation, and Ecological Jeremiad in Thomas Friedman's “Code Green”

Cited by 27 publications

References 33 publications

The Energy Covenant: Energy Dominance and the Rhetoric of the Aggrieved

The Energy Covenant: Energy Dominance and the Rhetoric of the Aggrieved

The Neoliberal Disciplining of LeBron James and Kevin Durant: Sports Media Discourse on NBA Free Agency as Ideological Critique

Neoliberal Backgrounding, the Meatless Monday Campaign, and the Rhetorical Intersections of Food, Nature, and Cultural Identity

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About