Dana Cloud
Independent Scholar, No Affiliation, Department Member
- Communication Studies, Rhetorical Theory and Criticism, Philosophy, International Relations, Economics, Marxism (Political Science), and 34 moreIdeology and Discourse Analysis, Labor History and Studies, Organizational Communication, Visual Rhetoric, Rhetoric and Public Culture, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Rhetoric of Science, Rhetoric, Feminism(s), Media Studies, Media, Corporate Social Responsibility, Popular Culture, Social Movements, Joshua Gunn, Cultural Studies (Communication), Rhetorical Theory, Marxism, Rhetoric and Social Theory, Rhetorical Criticism, Public Sphere, Labor Movements, Sexuality Studies, Lesbian and Gay History, Gender Studies, Feminism, Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, Citrizenship, Queer, Reproduction, Maternity, Abortion, Sexualtiy Gender and National Identity, and Twentieth-Century Australian Historyedit
- Activist, teacher, criticedit
The period after the 1995 strike was one during which management regrouped and the Boeing workforce settled in after their victory. To some extent, managerial and official union intimidation, along with the ongoing pressure on workers in... more
The period after the 1995 strike was one during which management regrouped and the Boeing workforce settled in after their victory. To some extent, managerial and official union intimidation, along with the ongoing pressure on workers in the plants, can explain the difficulty that activists had in sustaining their reform organizations. This chapter describes how the activists themselves were caught up in the dilemmas of representation. Their commitment to democracy informed their critique from below of the discourse and practices of union leadership. Yet their taking on the tasks of leading a rank-and-file movement put them in a position to replicate, in form if not in goal, some of the habits they decried. In particular, focusing on getting elected to powerful union posts, making decisions on behalf of members of rank-and-file organizations, using top-down and double-edged legal tools to reform the official union, and decrying the passivity of the membership all contributed to the burnout and eventual retreat from dissident activity of many of the activists whose voices are chronicled here.
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This chapter presents an exchange between the author and Keith Thomas, which both have referred to as a “postmortem” on Unionists for Democratic Change. The exchange was edited and compiled from two conversations: The first is a recorded... more
This chapter presents an exchange between the author and Keith Thomas, which both have referred to as a “postmortem” on Unionists for Democratic Change. The exchange was edited and compiled from two conversations: The first is a recorded interview between Cloud and Thomas in Wichita, Kansas, on July 17, 2001, the evening after a small demonstration at the union hall earlier that afternoon; the second source is a series of letters exchanged in summer 2006. Here Thomas complicates the author's arguments that mistakes and misdirected focus were to blame for the decline of the union democracy movement at Boeing. His observations will also encourage readers to understand the limitations of the movement in the contexts of the real lives of activists set against a renewed employer's offensive and a very powerful and change-resistant union bureaucracy.
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This book engages union reformers at Boeing in Wichita and Seattle to reveal how ordinary workers attempted to take command of their futures by chipping away at the cozy partnership between union leadership and corporate management.... more
This book engages union reformers at Boeing in Wichita and Seattle to reveal how ordinary workers attempted to take command of their futures by chipping away at the cozy partnership between union leadership and corporate management. Focusing on the 1995 strike at Boeing, the book renders a multi-layered account of the battles between the company and the union and within the union led by Unionists for Democratic Change and two other dissident groups. The book gives voice to the company's claims of the hardships of competitiveness the entrenched union leaders' calls for concessions in the name of job security, alongside the democratic union reformers' fight for a rank-and-file upsurge against both the company and the union leaders. Incorporating theory and methods from the fields of organizational communication as well as labor studies, the book methodically uncovers and analyzes the goals, strategies, and dilemmas of the dissidents who, while wanting to uphold the ideas and ideals of the union, took up the gauntlet to make it more responsive to workers and less conciliatory toward management, especially in times of economic stress or crisis.
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This colloquy results froma series of discussions between the authors concerning issues of (a) the status of labor activity in organizational communication study, (b) the dimensions of and prospects for workplace democracy in practice,... more
This colloquy results froma series of discussions between the authors concerning issues of (a) the status of labor activity in organizational communication study, (b) the dimensions of and prospects for workplace democracy in practice, and (c) the need for the discipline of communication to attend more seriously to the material world. The authors write this essay using three voices: each of theirs plus a joint expression of interests. Above all, this conversation seeks to strengthen engagement of possibilities for robust democratic practices in the work of today's globalizing market economy and to challenge communication scholars to see economic and labor phenomena as more than can be perceived through the lens of unbridled discursive and symbolic constructionism. Although this essay ranges across questions of ontological status, epistemological choices, disciplinary mythos, and theoretical preferences, it is ultimately practical with a call for (organizational) communication scholars and activists to engage the misguided pursuits, injustices, and hopes surrounding contemporary corporate-consumer capitalism.
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... To veil the threat of terror. And check the show of pride.1 Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man's Burden,” McClure's Magazine 12 (February 1899 ... View all notes. Following the photograph of a bald white... more
... To veil the threat of terror. And check the show of pride.1 Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man's Burden,” McClure's Magazine 12 (February 1899 ... View all notes. Following the photograph of a bald white man with a serious expression on his face, a photo shows a dark‐skinned man ...
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This introductory chapter begins with a review of the state of labor unions in the United States. Unionization rates in the United States declined steadily from the late 1940s (when unions represented 36 percent of U.S. workers) until the... more
This introductory chapter begins with a review of the state of labor unions in the United States. Unionization rates in the United States declined steadily from the late 1940s (when unions represented 36 percent of U.S. workers) until the present economic recession (12.4 percent). Favorability ratings of labor unions fell sharply between 2007 and 2010—years of heightened economic crisis—to an all-time low of 42 percent. There are many factors in this decline, including the postwar pact labor leaders made with American business, the McCarthyist purge from unions of the most progressive activists during the Cold War, and a relentless employers' offensive dating from the 1970s that included rampant union busting alongside the off-loading, subcontracting, and outsourcing of previously unionized work. The chapter then sets out the book's purpose, which is to situate the struggle at Boeing inside broader narrative frames, one about the history of unions and movements for union democracy, and the other about the history of the Boeing Company and its unions in particular. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
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This chapter goes into depth about union reformers' overarching critique, that the union engages in too much cooperation with the company. Such cooperation often manifests itself in... more
This chapter goes into depth about union reformers' overarching critique, that the union engages in too much cooperation with the company. Such cooperation often manifests itself in joint safety, performance, and team-based management initiatives. These workers' assessment of programs such as Total Quality Management and the implementation of the High Performance Work Organization illustrate two arguments. First, workers possess the resources of their experience to recognize and reject ideological efforts to align their interests with those of the company. Second, scholars and labor union members alike should be skeptical about worker inclusion programs that ask the workers to give up their autonomy from and antagonism toward their employer. Such independence is necessary to the fight to defend and extend workers' standard of living during contract negotiations and grievance procedures.
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This chapter assesses the situation of the dissident Machinist movement at Boeing today. There are a number of important and poignant lessons from this struggle for democratic reformers inside unions. These lessons speak to how reformers... more
This chapter assesses the situation of the dissident Machinist movement at Boeing today. There are a number of important and poignant lessons from this struggle for democratic reformers inside unions. These lessons speak to how reformers can push their official leadership while staying focused on the company; prioritize long-term organizing and contract cycle agitation above electoral bids and legal strategies; and recognize that unions—and dissident movements inside of unions—are only democratic and vital to the extent that they involve large numbers of their members and represent their demands. The chapter considers the question of whether one can speak legitimately for the rank and file without their active involvement in the movement from a dissident position any more than one should do so from a business union position. The credentials and, more important, the power of a dissident union movement depend upon taking advantage of critical rank-and-file consciousness to build an organization that restores a balance of power between union leadership and the rank and file in the longer term. Only then can the rank and file become ready, when the time comes, to make their own history.
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... Support group news during the Persian Gulf War depended on a particu-Page 24. XXJI CONTROL AND CONSOLATION IN CULTURE AND POLITICS lar gendered mapping of the "home front" that created consolatory... more
... Support group news during the Persian Gulf War depended on a particu-Page 24. XXJI CONTROL AND CONSOLATION IN CULTURE AND POLITICS lar gendered mapping of the "home front" that created consolatory rather than political space for discussing the war. ...
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... Rhetoric and Economics: Or, How Rhetoricians Can Get a Little Class Dana L. Cloud University of Texas, Austin Selling the Free Market: The Rhetoric of Economic Correctness. ... $12.60. Created Unequal.By James Galbraith. Chicago:... more
... Rhetoric and Economics: Or, How Rhetoricians Can Get a Little Class Dana L. Cloud University of Texas, Austin Selling the Free Market: The Rhetoric of Economic Correctness. ... $12.60. Created Unequal.By James Galbraith. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000; pp. 368. ...
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Recent rhetorical theory has adopted two versions—variously idealist and relativist—of the proposition that discourse is influential in or even constitutive of social and material "reality." This idea, which underpins much... more
Recent rhetorical theory has adopted two versions—variously idealist and relativist—of the proposition that discourse is influential in or even constitutive of social and material "reality." This idea, which underpins much critical communication scholarship, I am calling the "materiality of ...
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... View all notes. followed by an (overdetermined) turn to articulation theory in cultural studies.16 16. Jennifer Daryl Slack, “The Theory and Method of Articulation in Cultural Studies,” in Morley and Chen, 112–30. ... Both political... more
... View all notes. followed by an (overdetermined) turn to articulation theory in cultural studies.16 16. Jennifer Daryl Slack, “The Theory and Method of Articulation in Cultural Studies,” in Morley and Chen, 112–30. ... Both political parties in the US are gunning for Iran. ...
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Critical intellectuals are unfortunately accustomed to intentional, institutional censorship and precarious academic labor as threats to the freedom to research, teach, and speak their minds. However, alongside these material forces of... more
Critical intellectuals are unfortunately accustomed to intentional, institutional censorship and precarious academic labor as threats to the freedom to research, teach, and speak their minds. However, alongside these material forces of exclusion and silencing, we must consider ideological conditions as threats to academic freedom. As a case in point, “civility” is what rhetorical scholar Michael McGee describes as an “ideograph”: a shorthand word or phrase that captures and organizes community around prevailing ideological commitments. “Civility”—the basis of universal, rule-governed cooperation—is a widely takenfor-granted good in capitalist society. However, the call for civility masks the presence of contending interests and inequality. Those who call attention to antagonism definitionally violate the rules of civility and are subject to legitimated sanction. The ideology of civility is thus a significant threat to academic freedom. In what follows, I support this argument first with a historical and etymological discussion of the term “civility.” Then I will discuss the increasing deployment of this term to discipline critical intellectuals, particularly Steven Salaita. I conclude with a discussion of resistance to this ideological frame and the oppressive actions that it justifies.
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This article explores news coverage from 2010–2013 of Chelsea (formerly known as Bradley) Manning’s disclosures of both state and gender secrets to discover how government actors, journalists, and social movement leaders disciplined... more
This article explores news coverage from 2010–2013 of Chelsea (formerly known as Bradley) Manning’s disclosures of both state and gender secrets to discover how government actors, journalists, and social movement leaders disciplined emergent truths in two modalities. The first modality is juridical, involving Manning’s trial and reporting that focuses attention exclusively on Manning’s crime against the state; the second is biopolitical, disciplining Manning by discrediting her body and voice as troubled, confused, damaged, weak, irrational, and pathological. That Manning’s disclosures resulted in repressive and discursive discipline does not mean that such an outcome was inevitable. Rather than abandoning disclosure as a democratic project, we might ask ourselves how the rhetorical process of disclosure might open up a contradictory publicity that critically exposes the complexity of discipline itself.
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... The only way forward is the sporadic, ironic, schizophrenic, localized and anarchic rejection of ... Likewise, queer theorist Michael Warner thinks disruptive cultural play, or romping, may be a ... The Matrix, like the vision of... more
... The only way forward is the sporadic, ironic, schizophrenic, localized and anarchic rejection of ... Likewise, queer theorist Michael Warner thinks disruptive cultural play, or romping, may be a ... The Matrix, like the vision of society in much of poststructuralist theory, permits excess ...
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This article performs a narrative analysis of a newsletter published over a period of 2 years by locked-out workers during an industrial conflict. The analysis of a unique archive of worker documents points to the significance of battle... more
This article performs a narrative analysis of a newsletter published over a period of 2 years by locked-out workers during an industrial conflict. The analysis of a unique archive of worker documents points to the significance of battle metaphors and their shifting deployment over time. Early in the lockout, Staley workers rhetorically constructed themselves as warriors fighting a heroic battle. However, later in the struggle as defeat approached, the role descriptions in the newsletter emphasized the workers’ victim, refugee, and martyr status. The analysis of workers’ narratives is situated in this study in the context of narrative studies, critical organizational communication studies, and social movement studies.
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... defies all the regulations for black men on television."1 Similarly, Milloy (1990) calls Hawk "the Afrocentric creation that [actor Avery] Brooks bred ... is Hawk's double nature more clearly illustrated than in a scene... more
... defies all the regulations for black men on television."1 Similarly, Milloy (1990) calls Hawk "the Afrocentric creation that [actor Avery] Brooks bred ... is Hawk's double nature more clearly illustrated than in a scene in which he is literally doubled in the character of Tyrone Blackwell. ...
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... Support group news during the Persian Gulf War depended on a particu-Page 24. XXJI CONTROL AND CONSOLATION IN CULTURE AND POLITICS lar gendered mapping of the "home front" that created consolatory... more
... Support group news during the Persian Gulf War depended on a particu-Page 24. XXJI CONTROL AND CONSOLATION IN CULTURE AND POLITICS lar gendered mapping of the "home front" that created consolatory rather than political space for discussing the war. ...
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This chapter introduces the arguments of the book in the context of a summary of the critique of traditional American union leadership as pro-business and dangerously invested in partnerships with management. First, it chronicles the two... more
This chapter introduces the arguments of the book in the context of a summary of the critique of traditional American union leadership as pro-business and dangerously invested in partnerships with management. First, it chronicles the two waves of the American union movement, telling the story of the rise of democratic unionism with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and its subsequent decline in the postwar years. It then provides some examples from the 1990s and 2000s of instances in which conservative unions led workers to defeats, primarily because of the failure to prioritize rank-and-file action in favor of more administrative, legalistic, and consumer-oriented strategies. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the changing situation of labor today. It argues that that the story of the rise of the CIO provides an inspiring model of the birth of a fighting labor movement out of a period of fragmentation, exclusivity, and weakness in existing labor institutions. It further suggests that present conditions of economic crisis and the stirrings of a new militancy are ripe for a similar transformation.
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... Assistants Catherine Ratliff and Kyle Jensen Editorial Board atriciaBizzell '.ollege of the Holy Cross »avid Bleich Jniversity of Rockester ,yrm Z ... C. Jarratt University of California, Irvine Min-Zhart Lu University of... more
... Assistants Catherine Ratliff and Kyle Jensen Editorial Board atriciaBizzell '.ollege of the Holy Cross »avid Bleich Jniversity of Rockester ,yrm Z ... C. Jarratt University of California, Irvine Min-Zhart Lu University of Louisville Susan Miller University of Utah Jasper Neel Southern ...
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This article performs an ideographic analysis of the bipartisan political deployment of the slogan <family values> during the 1992 Presidential election campaign. The analysis shows that <family values> talk functioned during... more
This article performs an ideographic analysis of the bipartisan political deployment of the slogan <family values> during the 1992 Presidential election campaign. The analysis shows that <family values> talk functioned during that campaign to scapegoat Black men and poor Americans for social problems. However, the <family values> ideograph also is invested with a gendered utopian narrative that makes its scapegoating less apparent and more persuasive. Ultimately, in constructing the family as the site of all responsibility and change, the rhetoric of <family values> privatizes social responsibility for ending poverty and racism.
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This chapter begins with the narrative frames of company and union, describing the rise to power of the Boeing Company and of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW). Known for its militancy, the IAMAW... more
This chapter begins with the narrative frames of company and union, describing the rise to power of the Boeing Company and of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW). Known for its militancy, the IAMAW has enacted a history paralleling the turbulence of the larger labor movement. Throughout its history, the leadership of the IAMAW at Boeing has cooperated with concessions unless forced to do otherwise by the rank and file of the union. At key moments, such as the 1995 strike at Boeing, rank-and-file workers can push their leaders from below, putting out educational flyers, petitioning against concessions, and organizing union members into an anticoncession caucus.
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ABSTRACT This essay ruminates on the imperative of struggle against oppression as a condition for survival. While many circumstances encourage our resignation to oppressive power relations, there are revolutionary possibilities for human... more
ABSTRACT This essay ruminates on the imperative of struggle against oppression as a condition for survival. While many circumstances encourage our resignation to oppressive power relations, there are revolutionary possibilities for human agency against injustice in interpersonal, social, institutional, and political domains of contemporary society.
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This article examines coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake on the Oprah Winfrey Show. I argue that the Oprah Winfrey Show attempted to deploy therapeutic discourse to warrant what Naomi Klein (2008) calls the “shock doctrine”: an... more
This article examines coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake on the Oprah Winfrey Show. I argue that the Oprah Winfrey Show attempted to deploy therapeutic discourse to warrant what Naomi Klein (2008) calls the “shock doctrine”: an argument for the demolition of “failed” societies and states so that they can be rebuilt in the neoliberal image of private capitalism. Thus, Winfrey's discourse might be described as “shock therapy.” However, celebrities featured during these episodes worked as shock absorbers, engaging in an ideological tug-of-war with the therapeutic narrative, oscillating between personalistic and more broadly critical perspectives on crisis.
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In this paper I argue that “civility” is an ideograph: <civility>. The ideograph is a concept originated by rhetorical scholar Michael McGee in 1980, who defined the ideograph as a word or slogan sufficiently abstract to win adherence of... more
In this paper I argue that “civility” is an ideograph: <civility>. The ideograph is a concept originated by rhetorical scholar Michael McGee in 1980, who defined the ideograph as a word or slogan sufficiently abstract to win adherence of “the people,” but with a critical and ideological edge when deployed in specific ideological contexts. McGee calls on critics to study such terms both synchronically (as the operate in the present moment) and diachronically (as they have emerged and been used across history).
This paper preforms both a diachronic and synchronic analysis of <civility>, in which I argue that the term has its origins, ironically, in Enlightenment thought, in which civil public deliberation for the common good was the sine qua non of democratic life. The irony comes when <civility>, a property held by citizens, is by definition exclusive of those not counted among citizens: women, slaves, and the poor. The other irony is that the Western ideal of <civility> became the ideological basis for imperialism, in which the West claimed to be “civilizing” the natives of other continents. These are founding exclusions in Enlightenment thought, which is why antagonistic women and “uppity” Black activists (among others) are defined as out of public bounds by charges of incivility.
This paper preforms both a diachronic and synchronic analysis of <civility>, in which I argue that the term has its origins, ironically, in Enlightenment thought, in which civil public deliberation for the common good was the sine qua non of democratic life. The irony comes when <civility>, a property held by citizens, is by definition exclusive of those not counted among citizens: women, slaves, and the poor. The other irony is that the Western ideal of <civility> became the ideological basis for imperialism, in which the West claimed to be “civilizing” the natives of other continents. These are founding exclusions in Enlightenment thought, which is why antagonistic women and “uppity” Black activists (among others) are defined as out of public bounds by charges of incivility.
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Sixteen years ago, Carole Blair, Julie R. Brown, and Leslie A. Baxter argued in the Quarterly Journal of Speech that disciplinary territoriality grants legitimacy to specialists while denying it to out-of-the-mainstream scholars who... more
Sixteen years ago, Carole Blair, Julie R. Brown, and Leslie A. Baxter argued in the Quarterly Journal of Speech that disciplinary territoriality grants legitimacy to specialists while denying it to out-of-the-mainstream scholars who challenge disciplinary norms. 1 Demonstrating how the practices of writing, publication, and reward defining what ''counts'' as scholarly discourse systematically disadvantage women, ''Disciplining the Feminine'' called on scholars ''to scrutinize and evaluate their own rules for engagement and practice.'' 2 Political activism among scholars likewise calls into question unspoken collective rules, often meeting with a hostile response not unlike those lobbed at women scholars. Despite a rich and storied tradition of public intellectualism in our field, we are most rewarded for attending ''annual conferences to compare notes. .. constitut[ing our] own universe.'' 3 As activists, we understand ''engagement'' to entail working toward positive social change in a sometimes uncivil, aggressive manner. As scholars, however, our enthusiasm for engagement is often policed by our affiliate institutions via various forms of depoliticization and/or apoliticization inside the academy. Put differently: Agency as ''publicly engaged'' scholars becomes subject to depoliticizing norms when we transgress the border between scholarship and politics. So, we might ask: What are these norms? How do communication scholars negotiate this boundary and with what consequences? What do these consequences reveal about the norms and values of scholarly associations, particularly our own? Here, we argue that policing the border between activism and scholarship impedes most significantly the activist scholar who understands ''engagement'' as unavoidably and inherently political, who recognizes objectivity and apoliticization as institutional smokescreen. Honoring the interdisciplinary history of communication studies, we