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Part Two: Celebrity, Commodity, Citizenship
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| 93 Part Two Celebrity, Commodity, Citizenship As the liberal welfare state and its apparatuses of social justice are battered by populist and legal assaults, and as the legitimacy of and resources for public programs wither within the cultural imaginary, celebrities and privatized philanthropies within a “nonprofit industrial complex” have gradually taken their place assuming responsibility for persons who, within the terms of neoliberalism, are called to pull themselves up by their proverbial bootstraps. Social action in the neoliberal era is, thus, characterized by the increasing presence of Hollywood celebrities, pop icons, and corporate moguls who have stepped in where the state used to be, proliferating privatized forms of welfare and redistribution. If, as the essays in the previous part of this volume have suggested, cultural resistance in the current moment is characterized by a necessary embeddedness within institutions and discourses of the market, the chapters collected here in the second part offer careful readings of political paradoxes introduced by commodification and celebrity within cases of such “marketized” cultural resistance. Unpacking the terms of an uneasy “truce” between circulating paeans to bootstraps individualism and free market entrepreneurialism , on the one hand, and political interventions geared to global social justice packaged and performed by celebrities, on the other, these essays centrally explore a range of ethical and strategic tensions that mark instances of commodity activism in the neoliberal moment. To these ends, the authors in this part consider, for example, what our analyses of neoliberal citizenship miss when we read screen star Brad Pitt’s rebuilding campaigns in post-Katrina New Orleans simply as a diverting— and profitable—spectacle. What account of Pitt’s celebrity activism might we make given that his presence in storm-ravaged New Orleans champions solutions to state-sanctioned disregard and displacement of “suffering Others” that are nevertheless fully invested in commodity capitalism and discourses of celebrity? How should we unpack strident critiques of global capital when they emanate from the hypercommodified performative repertoires of hiphop culture? What is the civic impact of media moguls who combine neo- 94 | Celebrity, Commodity, Citizenship liberal entrepreneurial savvy and “postracial” opportunism in their efforts to proliferate media representations of marginalized Others? How and for whom does screen siren Angelina Jolie’s ambassadorial philanthropy work? Engaging this range of questions, the chapters in this part substantiate the claim that commodity activism, as a historico-cultural phenomenon, defies ready generalizations. Powerful reminders of the commonplace of contradiction within hegemonic discourses of the neoliberal age, these analyses, moreover, offer us the means to rethink traditional models of activism and philanthropy and Left assumptions about the dialectics of resistance. Pursuing recalibrations taking shape within modes of civic intervention in the historical context of global capital and neoliberalism, the essays in this part illuminate the ways that social action orchestrated, performed, and circulated by celebrities may be transforming cultural imaginaries of what it means to “do” citizenship at the present moment. Bringing into relief a dappled terrain of emergent subjectivities—citizens and consumers, activists and entrepreneurs , celebrities and agitators—these essays work to highlight political dilemmas raised by shifts in what counts as “citizenship,” “marginality,” and “democratic resistance.” Exploring these tensions, this part of the book opens with Kevin Fox Gotham, who examines the collision of commodification, celebrity, and citizenship as they were brought into relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that devastated the Gulf Coast of the US. Gotham examines the role of celebrity activism in the spectacularization of disaster, a process by which, as he puts it, tragic events and catastrophes are reduced to profit-making opportunities and consumption-based entertainment experiences. Closely reading screen star Brad Pitt’s “Make It Right” campaign as a major site of such spectacularization, Gotham reveals how Pitt’s celebrity advocacy in the rebuilding effort in New Orleans, while clearly framed within and enriched by corporatized and consumption-based market interests, has nevertheless also managed to build a social movement that has influenced the national political agenda by focusing public attention on entrenched class and race inequities brought to light by the storm. Next, Roopali Mukherjee’s essay offers an interpretive reading of the politics and aesthetics of “Diamonds (Are from Sierra Leone),” a much-lauded single by hip-hop superstar Kanye West that highlights human rights atrocities fueled by the global trade in African “blood diamonds.” For Mukherjee, West’s single and the music video that accompanies it centrally underscore the commonplace of contradiction, the messy push and pull of autonomy and subjugation, when political work...