Rhetorical Hegemony: Transactional Ontologies and the Reinvention of Material Infrastructures

Abstract

This article proposes rhetorical hegemony as a new materialist intervention into the production of alternative political economic futures. It problematizes contemporary theories of hegemony that assert affect as beyond rhetorical engagement, suggesting that these accounts fail to produce viable political economic alternatives because they use, but do not reinvent, the prevailing affective relations. Turning to and extending Foucault's middle and late work to forge a different model, the article discusses rhetorical hegemony as the entangled relationships between materiality and power. In conversation with other contemporary theories, it argues for a practice of rhetorical hegemony that materially recapacitates energetic potential and, consequently, the milieu. The article ends by outlining the rhetorical, political, and intellectual implications of this shift.

Precarity, nihilism, and grace

“…In so doing, they free up individuals to ‘react creatively and interpretatively to processes of commodification which impinge on their lives’ (Giddens and Hutton 2000: 7). Using visual irony and satire, FoMO nihilist memes productively intervene within ‘the capitalist milieu’ by exposing the rhetoricity of operative infrastructures (Chaput and Hanan 2019: 358). According to Berlant (2016), infrastructures are ‘dynamics of attraction and aversion’ the invisible organizing circuitries that nudge us along in predictable ways (Chaput and Hanan, 2019: 399).…”

“…Using visual irony and satire, FoMO nihilist memes productively intervene within ‘the capitalist milieu’ by exposing the rhetoricity of operative infrastructures (Chaput and Hanan 2019: 358). According to Berlant (2016), infrastructures are ‘dynamics of attraction and aversion’ the invisible organizing circuitries that nudge us along in predictable ways (Chaput and Hanan, 2019: 399). Once visible, these infrastructures become subject to critique and susceptible to change.…”