Anne Norton On Representation Analysis

Anne Norton's work on representation demonstrates the importance of an attunement to the contexts in which political ideas circulate. She translates key tenets of American liberalism into everyday practices like eating, dressing, and shopping. Such practices enact assumptions that freedom means choice and that people represent themselves and exercise authority when they choose freely. By contexualizing liberalism in quotidian activities, moreover, Norton draws out the way these activities challenge its basic premises. "They reveal coercion in the context of choice. They show the power of the representation to overcome that which it purports to represent"(Liberal Theory and American Popular Culture, 85-86). Because concepts are more than
The problem with such accounts, which have been heavily criticized within cultural studies, is "that they presume their political purchase in advance, fail to link to a larger politics, and fail to explain why a particular stylistic performance resists rather than shores up a hegemonic formation or why its resistance connects it to progressive struggles for social justice rather than fascist aspirations for domination". (Ethics and Cultural Studies, 578-584; Cultural Studies: An Introduction,
The reduction of trade barriers, deregulation of financial systems, and stimulation of networked communications technologies led to dramatic increases in the flow of goods, capital, jobs, and information throughout the world. Economies floundering in brutally competitive environment could receive loans, but only under strict conditions determined by neo-liberal doctrine, state services had to be cut, utilities privatized, price subsidies removed, and restrictions on capital flow eliminated. In a number of cases, The Global Report on Human Settlements 2003 explains, "the conduct of privatization was done in a great hurry under overwhelming pressure from foreign advisers, and the result was ‘outright theft.’ Public assets were sometimes sold to the private sector for a fraction of their true worth."(UN Habitat. P. 44). The clear result of globalized neoliberalism has been dramatic increases in inequality and insecurity, within countries as well as between