The Neoliberal Racial Project: The Tiger Mother and Governmentality
Abstract
Combining the conceptual approach of racial formation and racial projects with the Foucauldian concept of governmentality, Jeong‐eun Rhee theorizes the “neoliberal racial project” (NRP) and examines contemporary meanings and operations of race and racism in relation to neoliberalism. She analyzes Amy Chua's popular parenting memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, as a specific case of the NRP, and demonstrates how in this text race is pressed to work in new — neoliberal — ways, re/generating different kinds of categories and meanings, yet also continuously drawing upon old categories and meanings, to effect and rationalize social arrangements of power and exploitation, violence and expropriation. What is noteworthy is the way in which racial neoliberalism builds silently on the structural conditions of racism while disabling the very categories of their recognizability. Consequently, Rhee argues for new, historically bounded theories that can articulate how the meanings, categories, and concepts of races are constantly being reconfigured.
Number of times cited: 8
- Stephanie Curley, Jeong-eun Rhee, Binaya Subedi and Sharon Subreenduth, Activism as/in/for Global Citizenship: Putting Un-Learning to Work Towards Educating the Future, The Palgrave Handbook of Global Citizenship and Education, 10.1057/978-1-137-59733-5_37, (589-606), (2018).
- Naomi Nichols and Jessica Braimoh, Community Safety, Housing Precariousness and Processes of Exclusion: An Institutional Ethnography from the Standpoints of Youth in an ‘Unsafe’ Urban Neighbourhood, Critical Sociology, 44, 1, (157), (2018).
- Bianca J. Baldridge, Nathan Beck, Juan Carlos Medina and Marlo A. Reeves, Toward a New Understanding of Community-Based Education: The Role of Community-Based Educational Spaces in Disrupting Inequality for Minoritized Youth, Review of Research in Education, 41, 1, (381), (2017).
- Christina Ho, The new meritocracy or over-schooled robots? Public attitudes on Asian–Australian education cultures, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43, 14, (2346), (2017).
- Helen Proctor and Arathi Sriprakash, Race and legitimacy: historical formations of academically selective schooling in Australia, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43, 14, (2378), (2017).
- David Moffette and Shaira Vadasaria, Uninhibited violence: race and the securitization of immigration, Critical Studies on Security, 4, 3, (291), (2016).
- Joseph Zanoni, Theorizing Dialogue among Various Voices in Critical Theory, Global Perspectives on Human Capital in Early Childhood Education, 10.1057/9781137490865_2, (27-43), (2015).
- Jeong-eun Rhee and Binaya Subedi, Colonizing and Decolonizing Projects of Re/Covering Spirituality, Educational Studies, 50, 4, (339), (2014).
