Journal Articles

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/7915

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Author: search.filters.author.Phelan SP

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    The morality and political antagonisms of neoliberal discourse: Campbell Brown and the dorporatization of educational justice
    (University of Southern California, 2017) Salter LS; Phelan SP
    Neoliberalism is routinely criticized for its moral indifference, especially concerning the social application of moral objectives. Yet it also presupposes a particular moral code, where acting on the assumption of individual autonomy becomes the basis of a shared moral-political praxis. Using a discourse theoretical approach, this article explores different articulations of morality in neoliberal discourse. We focus on the case of Campbell Brown, the former CNN anchor who reinvented herself from 2012 to 2016 as a prominent charter school advocate and antagonist of teachers unions. We examine the ideological significance of a campaigning strategy that coheres around an image of the moral superiority of corporatized schooling against an antithetical representation of the moral degeneracy of America’s public schools system. In particular, we highlight how Brown attempts to incorporate the fragments of different progressive discourses into a neoliberalized vision of educational justice.
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    It’s neoliberalism, stupid’ New Zealand media and the NZME-Fairfax merger
    (Counterfutures, 2016) Phelan SP
    AT THE JAIPUR literary festival in January 2015, the writer Eleanor Catton described New Zealand as a country governed by ‘neoliberal, profit-obsessed, very shallow, very money-hungry politicians who do not care about culture’.1 The comments generated much media controversy in her homeland. Catton was denounced for her insolence, ingratitude, and even traitory. Some right-wing pundits disparaged what they saw as her politically illiterate use of the term ‘neoliberal’. Her comments triggered a local version of a reactionary discourse that regards the concept of neoliberalism as the paranoid creation of left conspiracy theorists.