"Strictly an act of street violence": intimate publicity and affective divestment in the New Orleans Mother's Day shooting. Issue 4 (2nd October 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Mack, Ashley Noel; McCann, Bryan J.
• Is Part Of: Communication and critical/cultural studies. Volume 14:Issue 4(2017)
• Page Start: 334
• Page End: 350
• Publication Date: 2017-10-02
• Subjects: Affect -- intimate publics -- neoliberalism -- New Orleans -- violence; Communication and culture -- Periodicals; Communication -- Periodicals; 302.205
• DOI: 10.1080/14791420.2017.1366661
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1479-1420

Abstract

ABSTRACT: On May 12, 2013, two men opened fire on a Mother's Day second line parade in New Orleans's Seventh Ward. This essay attends to discourses from public officials and news media following the shooting that reified what we describe as affective divestment from the suffering of historically marginalized bodies and communities. Specifically, public discourse characterized the shooting as an episode of "street violence" that did not warrant sustained national attention. Affective divestment is the consequence of rhetorical maneuvers that signal a pushing away from certain bodies by intimate publics—an estrangement at the symbolic level that has naturalized or rationalized the neglect of certain forms of suffering. Such estrangement, we argue, is a function of neoliberal logics that devalue and, at times, necessitate the suffering of disposable populations.