Neoliberal Discourse, commercialization of (the will to) truth, and antifeminism

Abstract

In a political context marked by clashes between increasingly antagonistic “wills to truth” (Foucault, 2014), highly radicalized discourses emerge. More than dividing subjects in political terms, these differences affect the constitution of subjectivities. Women, in this scenario, are targeted by discourses that seek to confine them within a standard, sometimes more conservative, at other times more progressive. As a result, practices of silencing directed at certain forms of subjectivation are reproduced. Based on this conjuncture, the present study investigates antifeminist discourses reproduced by women and disseminated on social media as “truths”. Our aim is to analyze how this (will to) truth is connected to neoliberal purposes while being commercialized as superior knowledge. To this end, we selected a video from the Instagram account of Ana Caroline Campagnolo, a state representative from Santa Catarina, in which antifeminist discourse mobilizes gender hierarchies as a premise for product marketing. Theoretically and methodologically grounded in Foucauldian Discourse Studies, the analysis, conducted through the archeogenealogical method, points to the use of discursive strategies as tools of persuasion and dissemination of antifeminism, which, in turn, fuels disputes over the supposedly correct way of being a woman and reproduces female rivalry.