Communication's quest for whiteness: the racial politics of disciplinary legitimacy. Issue 2 (2nd April 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: McCann, Bryan J.; Mack, Ashley Noel; Self, Rico
• Is Part Of: Communication and critical/cultural studies. Volume 17:Issue 2(2020)
• Page Start: 243
• Page End: 252
• Publication Date: 2020-04-02
• Subjects: Antiblackness -- citizenship -- disciplinarity -- legitimacy -- whiteness; Communication and culture -- Periodicals; Communication -- Periodicals; 302.205
• DOI: 10.1080/14791420.2020.1770822
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1479-1420

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This essay examines communication's historical anxieties regarding disciplinary legitimacy as an investment in whiteness. We argue that such anxieties are predicated upon a normative ideal of citizenship. As such, rhetorics of disciplinary legitimacy enact white civil society's originary exclusion, which is antiblackness. To illuminate the ways antiblackness finds expression in these anxieties, we engage the field's lengthy archive of public musings regarding legitimacy to trace the rhetorical workings of antiblackness therein.