Teeth Gritting Harmony: The Ideology of Neo -Liberalism

384 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2000.Teeth Gritting Harmony: The Ideology of Neo-Liberalism critically examines the ideology of the unfettered, laissez-faire market alongside the mass media institutions and the subjects' everyday practices which reproduce its myriad forms. The first two chapters lay out the theoretical scaffolding around which the dissertation is constructed. Chapter II presents a theory of ideology that is indebted to the materialist tradition of Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels via Louis Althusser. On the Althusserian view, ideology is not identified with consciousness so much as it is lived in materially-grounded institutions (i.e., Ideological State Apparatuses) and their associated practices. Chapter III presents the particulars of neo-liberal theory via the work of its must public exponent, Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman. Friedman's neo-liberal position is contrasted to the classical liberalism of Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations) with respect to its treatment of the State. Neo-liberal claims concerning the relationship between unfettered markets, prosperity and political liberty are also critically evaluated. The next three chapters apply this critique of ideology and "free market" neo-liberalism to mass media institutions using the discourse surrounding the North American Free Trade Agreement as a case-study. More specifically, in Chapter IV, I position think tanks as a new form of ISA and then critique their generally affirmative part in the campaign for NAFTA. Thereafter, in Chapter V, I furnish an account of the news media industry that emphasizes the largely congenial relations between the State and the media which are fostered by the practices of contemporary news work (e.g., elite sourcing, "objectivity", personalization of issues). The analysis is fleshed out in Chapter VI with a case-study of The New York Times' treatment of NAFTA in 1993. Finally, Chapter VII of the dissertation analyzes the character of subjectivity within the neo-liberal, market-steered order and the regular interpellations that regularly position people as "good subjects" of market practices.Ope