ABSTRACT This essay explores how a physiological notion of affect, one predicated on the transsubstantial circulation of micro-materiality, provides useful connectivity among old and new materialisms. First, it explores nascent theories of energetic matter in Marxism as potential sites for new materialist extensions. Second, it proposes affect as a theoretical shorthand for the circulating flows of matter central to the physiological production, orientation, and materialization of bodily capacities, including the ability to reinvent political economic habituation from the perspective of difference. Third, it illustrates the contributions of a Marxist new materialism through a brief discussion of contemporary race politics.

ABSTRACTThis 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.

Research Article| January 01 2010 Rhetorical Circulation in Late Capitalism:Neoliberalism and the Overdetermination of Affective Energy Catherine Chaput Catherine Chaput Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Philosophy & Rhetoric (2010) 43 (1): 1–25. https://doi.org/10.5325/philrhet.43.1.0001 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Catherine Chaput; Rhetorical Circulation in Late Capitalism:Neoliberalism and the Overdetermination of Affective Energy. Philosophy & Rhetoric 1 January 2010; 43 (1): 1–25. doi: https://doi.org/10.5325/philrhet.43.1.0001 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressPhilosophy & Rhetoric Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2010 The Pennsylvania State University. All rights reserved.2010The Pennsylvania State University Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Using Frederic Jameson, we outline concentric circles of the political unconscious structuring debates about academic freedom at the national and state levels. By drawing parallels between the World War I university and the contemporary university, we suggest that such circles function historically, always bearing traces of an earlier time. To illustrate implications at one local site, we discuss the “Anti-American Studies” fliers repeatedly posted in our department and end by emphasizing the importance of using critical writing pedagogies to encourage opportunities for dissenting rhetorics.

t the close of the twentieth century, College English published a special issue of essays subtitled Symposium: English 1999. As the title indicates, the collected articles address contemporary English departments. Although most articles focus on the specific pedagogical or professional exigencies of English studies, the last essay of this issue, Jeffrey Williams's Brave New University, raises a more general concern about the shift in university focus from scholarship to salesmanship (742). Williams argues that the increasingly privatized structure of the university significantly redefines the goals of higher education. Rather than characterizing universities and their faculty as places where experts work for the common good, popular discourse-from films to news media-reinforces the corporate image by depicting the university within a commercial profit rationale (745). Because a supposedly new profit motive impinges on the traditional mission of the university, Williams asks that academics critique this corporatized form of higher education, distinguish the university as a not-for-profit institution, and develop representations of the university that reclaim its foundations in the public good (749-50). At the same time that I appreciate Williams's indictment of the privatized university system, I am troubled by the prevailing sentiment-among conservative and liberal thinkers alike-that the university has strayed from its civic-minded origins and transformed itself into a site of corporate demagoguery. Recent discussion surrounding the contemporary university system suggests that an altruistic, even philanthropic, ethos overwhelmingly defines our understanding of higher education's original mission. Consider, for instance, the plethora of books that emerged in the 1990s detailing the failure of higher education. While these

The author argues that, far from being a recent development, the corporatization of the university has been part of the often uneasy coexistence of democratic and capitalist interests throughout the history of the U.S. university system. She explores the relationship among higher education, democracy, and corporatization within Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Professor’s House to demonstrate an early public recognition of this corporatization as well as the way it has been historically obfuscated.