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Neoliberal risk and the discursive construction of the body in the wellness industry

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2860049
AutoresMaeve Eberhardt (0000-0001-5407-4839, University of Vermont, autor correspondente)
Ano2024
Volume53
Fascículo1
Páginas47-69
Data de publicação2024-02-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoLanguage in Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0047-4045 • E-ISSN: 1469-8013
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0047404522000409
OpenAlexW4294792853
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas10
Referências citadas54

In this article, I ask how the body is discursively constructed within the wellness industry. I analyze a corpus of articles from the Goop franchise, examining how bodies are constructed, and how subjects are impelled to act within contemporary neoliberal risk culture. Corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis reveals that the body is ultimately constructed as unwell and at risk, by virtue of its presence in the environment. Faced with this inescapable risk, the neoliberal citizen is responsible for managing the self in ever-increasing domains. I link the particularities of this discursive embodiment to larger cultural imperatives of self-surveillance, discipline, and control, and argue that it is particularly a white female subject who is interpellated within this discourse. Throughout, the wellness industry is revealed as propelling the interminable cycle of the project of the self, and as a contemporary mechanism for the reproduction of docile white female bodies. (Discursive embodiment, neoliberal ideology, risk society, corpus analysis, critical discourse analysis, feminist critique

Critical discourse analysis · Discourse analysis · Ideology · Neoliberalism (international relations) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Reproduction · Sociology · Subject (documents) · White (mutation) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Ecology · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law · Media Studies and Communication