Negotiating liberalism and bio-politics: Stylizing power in defense of the mall curfew

Quarterly Journal of Speech

Volumn 94, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 407-429

  Amsden, Brian ^a,b  

^a INDIANA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b Department of Communication and Culture ^*  (United States)

Author keywords

Bio politics; Foucault; Liberalism; Shopping mall; Youth

Indexed keywords

EID: 54249126478     PISSN: 00335630     EISSN: 14795779     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00335630802422246     Document Type: Article

References (103)

1. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 135-45.
2. I refer to a "spirit" of liberalism so as not to suggest that liberalism was authored by an intellectual elite. Rather, as Michael Calvin McGee argues, the philosophy of liberalism tries to express a pre-existing material consciousness felt "in the presence of" a particular ("feminized") style of power. See "The Origins of 'Liberty': A Feminization of Power," Communication Monographs 47 (1980): 25. Rather than reifying liberalism as a political rationality, McGee describes a historically situated material consciousness, felt in the presence of a particular political style, which found expression through the ideograph of "liberty." The malleability of "liberty" is evident in the transition from its usage in Elizabethan England to its usage in Mill's nineteenth-century work, On Liberty. Mill himself describes this transition in his introduction. While the concern of European liberals was once with making the sovereign responsive to the people's will, he notes, it was by then (the mid-nineteenth century) common to speak of the "tyranny of the majority" itself. (Mill puts this phrase in quotation marks but does not cite a particular source, indicating its usage as cliché at that time.) See John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, ed. Kathy Casey (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002), 4. Mill was expressing a different material consciousness from that of the late seventeenth-century Elizabethan Parliament, one that was suspicious of power even when it was exercised by a representative government.
3. Foucault, History of Sexuality, vol. I, 140; McGee, "Origins of 'Liberty,'" 25.
4. Robert Hariman, Political Style: The Artistry of Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 4 (emphasis removed).
5. Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self, 2nd ed. (London: Free Association Books, 1999). Here Rose takes up a Foucauldian concept. Foucault defined "technologies of the self" as those models that are available for individuals in particular historical contexts to constitute themselves as moral subjects. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 25-32. See also Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton, ed., Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988).
6. Foucault, History of Sexuality, vol. 1, 144; Rose, Governing the Soul, 10, 144.
7. Stanley Ingber, "Liberty and Authority: Two Facets of the Inculcation of Virtue," St. John's Law Review 69 (1995): 440.
8. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile: Or Treatise on Education, trans. William H. Payne (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003).
9. Gary Cross, The Cute and the Cool: Wondrous Innocence and Modern American Children's Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 14-15.
10. John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Kenneth P. Winkler (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1996), 33.
11. Jon Goss, "The 'Magic of the Mall': An Analysis of Form, Function, and Meaning in the Contemporary Retail Built Environment," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 83 (1993): 30.
12. Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 5.
13. Rose, Governing the Soul, xxiii.
14. I am not concerned here with whether or not, or to what extent, this representation accords with reality. However, it is noteworthy that in the United States alone, twelve- to nineteen-year-old youth spent approximately $179 billion in 2006. Paul Brubaker, "Youths Don't Take to Mall Escorts," Herald News, April 6, 2007, http://www.lexisnexis.com/.
15. Niraj Warikoo, "Mall Sets Curfew So Teens Won't Hang Out," Detroit Free Press, April 28, 2004, http://www.lexisnexis.com/.
16. Suzanne Smalley, "Tension, Fear after Mall Shooting," Boston Globe, December 16, 2004, http://www.lexisnexis.com/.
17. For more on these anxieties, see Lawrence Grossberg, "Why Does Neo-liberalism Hate Kids? The War on Youth and the Culture of Politics," Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies 23 (2001): 111-36;
18. Lawrence Grossberg, Caught in the Crossfire: Kids, Politics, and America's Future (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2005);
19. Henry Giroux, Fugitive Cultures: Race, Violence, and Youth (New York: Routledge, 1996);
20. Henry Giroux, Stealing Innocence: Youth, Corporate Power, and the Politics of Culture (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000);
21. Charles R. Acland, Youth, Murder, Spectacle: The Cultural Politics of "Youth in Crisis" (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995).
22. Mike A. Males, Framing Youth: Ten Myths about the Next Generation (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1999).
23. See Males, Framing Youth. Males provides an incredibly comprehensive statistical analysis of the incidents of various youth misbehaviors. He argues persuasively that lamentations about the fall of youth do not correspond with the existing evidence. They are "myths." While Males does not ask the question of why we would feel the need to exaggerate the problems associated with youth misbehavior (why we would make mythical threats out of real but relatively minor problems), his argument makes it clear that an answer cannot be founded on the behaviors of youth alone.
24. Rose, Governing the Soul, 124.
25. Robyn Meredith, "Big Mall's Curfew Raises Questions of Rights and Bias," New York Times, September 4,1996, http://www.lexisnexis.com/. The Mall of America has since expanded the curfew hours to begin at 4:00 PM. See "Parental Escort Policy," Mall of America, http://www. mallofamerica.com/about_moa_parentaLescort_policy.aspx/.
26. This number increased from thirty-nine just five months ago. Doris Hajewski and Dani McClain, "Mayfair Eases Restrictions," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, August 17, 2007, http://www.lexisnexis.com/.
27. See Michael Calvin McGee, "Text, Context, and the Fragmentation of Contemporary Culture," Western Journal of Speech Communication 54 (1990): 279.
28. "A Few Bad Apples," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 29, 2007, http://www.lexisnexis.com/; Meredith, "Big Mall's Curfew";
29. Holly Auer, "A Calmer Galleria," Buffalo News, September 6, 2003, http://www.lexisnexis.com/; "Mall Curfews Hamper Kids' Night Out," Times Union, September 18, 2004, http://www.lexisnexis.com/.
30. "Mall Curfews Hamper"; Reid, "Mall Security a Key."
31. "A Few Bad Apples."
32. The involvement of adults is confirmed by police reports. See Brubaker, "Mall Escorts"; Todd C. Frankel, "Teens, Better Bring Mom," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 25, 2007, http://www.lexisnexis.com/. Norm Parish, "Mall Imposes Rules on Teens," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 16, 2006, http://www.lexisnexis.com/.
33. Bethany Clough, "Lawyers Question Mall's Curfew," Fresno Bee, July 18, 2007, http://www.lexisnexis.com/. Note that Thomas does not question the legitimacy of adult patrons.
34. Lauren Beckham, "Shopping for a Hangout," Boston Herald, October 14, 1996, http://www.lexisnexis.com/. These sentiments are also present in Auer, "Calmer Galleria"; Donna Goodison, "Targeting Teens: Mall Rules on Youths Pit Perils vs. Profits," Boston Herald, August 7, 2005, http://www.lexisnexis.com/; "Genesee Valley Policy Seems to Be Working," Flint Journal, July 10, 2007, http://www.lexisnexis.com/.
35. Alex Johnson and Carole Sullivan, "Shopping Centers Showing Mallrats the Door," November 5, 2007, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21582725/.
36. Goss, '"Magic of the Mall,'" 19.
37. "Genesee Valley Policy" (emphasis added).
38. Goss, '"Magic of the Mall,'" 19.
39. Brubaker, "Mall Escorts."
40. Meredith, "Big Mall's Curfew."
41. See (respectively) Maggie Creamer and John Keenan, "Curfews at Two Omaha-area Shopping Centers Keep Those under 17 from Hanging Out Late," Omaha World-Herald, September 3, 2007, http://www.lexisnexis.com/;
42. Neal Karlen, "Tapping 'Mom Power' to Police a Huge Mall," New York Times, December 19, 1996, http://www.lexisnexis.com/; Auer, "Calmer Galleria"; Meredith, "Big Mall's Curfew"; Goodison, "Targeting Teens."
43. Smalley, "Tension, Fear."
44. Goodison, "Targeting Teens."
45. Parish, "Mall Imposes Rules." While Kavanagh does not identify the source of this fear, group size is elsewhere racially coded in terms of minority gangs. See Meredith, "Big Mall's Curfew." Many of the arguments offered in favor of the curfew contain implicit or explicit references to race. Most of the malls instituting curfews are located in mixed-race communities. See Stephen Deere, "Hand in Hand or Toe to Toe? Mall-teen Dynamic Evolves," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 20, 2006, http://www.lexisnexis.com/. These factors strongly suggest that racial fears and prejudices are an important factor in accounting for the appeal of the curfew. I discuss this aspect of the discourse later in the essay. At this time, I would merely caution against the temptation to reduce the many and varied appeals offered by curfew advocates to nothing more than equivocal signs of a singular racist agenda. That the curfew is motivated in part by racial anxieties does not mean that concerns about consumption, movement, obstruction, noise, and other transgressive behaviors are insincere or merely symptomatic of other, more "real," unconscious motivations.
46. Robert L. Ivie, Democracy and America's War on Terror (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005), 64.
47. Valley View Mall, "Behavioral Code of Conduct," http://www.valleyviewmall.com/shop/valleyview.nsf/security/.
48. Brubaker, "Mall Escorts."
49. Rose, Governing the Soul, xxiii.
50. This expansion of the juridical frame does not occur only in the mall, nor only in the treatment of youth. Flint, Michigan, recently began using its disorderly conduct statute to criminalize the practice of wearing baggy pants. While this is a style usually associated with youth (as well as with racial minorities), the legal mechanism that Flint has activated does not distinguish between mature citizens and citizens in potentia. See Jessica Bennett and Mary Chapman, "An Equal-Opportunity Crackdown?" Newsweek, July 28, 2008, http://www.lexisnexis.com/.
51. Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 59-60.
52. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 135, 200.
53. Rose, Governing the Soul, 218.
54. See (respectively) "Mall Curfews Hamper"; Reid, "Mall Security a Key"; Auer, "Calmer Galleria"; Jeremy Meyer, "Aurora Mall Targets 'Out-of-Hand' Teens: Curfew Puts Families First," Denver Post, August 26, 2005, http://www.lexisnexis.com/; "Genesee Valley Policy"; "Few Bad Apples."
55. Brubaker, "Mall Escorts."
56. Ernst-Ulrich Franzen, "Mayfair Mall: A Reasonable Policy," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 27, 2007, http://www.lexisnexis.com/.
57. Meredith, "Big Mall's Curfew."
58. Using Burkean terminology we could say that advocates are shifting rapidly through (or perhaps maintaining simultaneously) three different "ratios." While the "purpose" of maintaining comfort remains constant, it is associated variously in "act-purpose," "agent-purpose," and "scene-purpose" ratios. For Burke's treatise on this grammar, see Grammar of Motives.
59. When I refer to a "shift," or "transition," or "sequence," I am speaking in logical rather than temporal terms. The transition from a discourse of acts to agents to scenes is not reflected in the chronological arrangement of individual texts, or in the chronological arrangement of my archive. The three ratios are simultaneously maintained within a common discursive space. They can be arranged in logical sequence because of the form of the larger argument that they all participate in. The behavior (acts) of youth functions as evidentiary foundation, and the environment (scene) of the mall functions as the final warrant. (This is particularly evident in the titles given to curfew policies - "family first program," "family-friendly hours," etc.)
60. Reid, "Mall Security a Key."
61. "Mayfair Mall: Make it Reasonable," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 14, 2007, http://www.lexisnexis.com/.
62. "Mall Curfew an Overreaction," Denver Post, August 31, 2005, http://www.lexisnexis.com/; "Genesee Valley Policy"; Cindy Rodriguez, "Mall Curfew Lumps Good Kids with Bad," Denver Post, September 1, 2005, http://www.lexisnexis.com/; Parish, "Mall Imposes Rules."
63. Franzen, "Mayfair Mall."
64. Meredith, "Big Mall's Curfew."
65. Cindy Rodriguez, "Teen Mall Curfew Loses a Believer," Denver Post, September 15, 2005, http://www.lexisnexis.com/.
66. Reid, "Mall Security a Key" (emphasis added).
67. Meredith, "Big Mall's Curfew" (emphasis added).
68. "Colorado Mall Wants to Weed Out Blacks," Legal Spring, http://www.legalspring.com/Articles/misc-legal/20040811/375418_Colorado-mall- wants.html.
69. Deere, "Hand in Hand."
70. Giroux, Stealing Innocence, 9.
71. This appears in a letter written to sixteen-year-old Courtney Lazore, who had authored a website protesting the mall's curfew policy. "Letter from Valley View," Protest Valley View Mall: Fighting Unfair Discrimination, http://protestw.firez.org/ (accessed August 31, 2008).
72. Joel Currier, "Jamestown Mall Announces Restrictions on Teenagers," Sf. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 24, 2007, http://www.lexisnexis.com/.
73. Parish, "Mall Imposes Rules."
74. Meyer, "Aurora Mall Targets"; Matt Bach, "Mall Curfew Starts June 8," Flint Journal, May 30, 2007, http://www.lexisnexis. com/.
75. Frankel, "Better Bring Mom."
76. Annysa Johnson, "Shoppers Buy Mall Plan," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 1, 2007, http://www.lexisnexis.com/.
77. Bach, "Mall Curfew Starts June"; Deere, "Hand in Hand"; Auer, "Calmer Galleria"; Meredith, "Big Mall's Curfew"; Goodison, "Targeting Teens."
78. Lazore, "Letter from Valley View."
79. Rodriguez, "Curfew Loses a Believer."
80. Illinois requires only that minors under the age of fourteen not be left unsupervised for an "unreasonable period of time." Maryland allows that thirteen-year-olds are "reliable persons" for the purpose of supervising children under the age of eight. Dakota County, Minnesota, and Fairfax County, Virginia, both allow children as young as eight to be left alone for short periods, while sixteen-year-olds may be left alone up to a day or two (with slightly differing gradations in between). See National Child Care Information Center, "Children Home Alone and Babysitter Age Guidelines," http://www2.nccic.org/poptopics/homealone.html/. The American Red Cross advertises its babysitting course as for youth age eleven to fifteen. American Red Cross, "Babysitter's Training Course," http://www.redcross.org/services/hss/courses/babyindex.html.
81. Dana Cloud, "The Rhetoric of 〈Family Values〉: Scapegoating, Utopia, and the Privatization of Social Responsibility," Western Journal of Communication 62 (1998): 387-419.
82. Mary P. Ryan, "Gender and Public Access: Women's Politics in Nineteenth-Century America," in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 259-88;
83. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, eds., Woman, Culture, and Society (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1974).
84. In addition to Rosaldo and Lamphere, Woman, Culture, and Society, see Linda Imray and Audrey Middleton, "Public and Private: Marking the Boundaries," in The Public and the Private, ed. Eva Gamarnikow, David H. J. Morgan, June Purvis, and Daphne Taylorson (London: Heinemann, 1983), 12-27.
85. A good example of the equation of women with children is that of the nineteenth-century British Factory Acts, which defined women legally as minors. See Elizabeth Wilson, Women and the Welfare State (London: Tavistock Publications, 1977), 19.
86. Imray and Middleton, "Public and Private," 16.
87. Meredith, "Big Mall's Curfew."
88. For example, Goodison, "Targeting Teens"; Deere, "Hand in Hand"; Matt McKinney, "Mall of America Toughens Its Weekend Teen Curfew," September 28, 2005, http://www.lexisnexis.com/; Brubaker, "Mall Escorts."
89. Karlen, "Mom Power." A similar program has been instituted at the Aurora Mall in Colorado. See Meyer, "Aurora Mall Targets."
90. Karlen, "Mom Power."
91. Wilson, Welfare State, 9.
92. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo, "Woman, Culture, and Society: A Theoretical Overview," in Women, Culture, and Society, 26-27.
93. Rose, Governing the Soul, 213.
94. Jane Lewis, "Anxieties about the Family and the Relationships between Parents, Children and the State in Twentieth-Century England," in Children of Social Worlds: Development in a Social Context, ed. Martin Richards and Paul Light (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 31-54; Wilson, Welfare State.
95. Valley View Mall, "Youth Escort Policy," http://www. valleyviewmall.com/shop/valleyview.nsf/security/.
96. Valley View Mall, "Youth Escort Policy."
97. Valley View Mall, "Youth Escort Policy"; "A Few Bad Apples"; Goodison, "Targeting Teens."
98. For more on this distinction, see Celeste Michelle Condit, "Hegemony in a Mass-mediated Society: Concordance about Reproductive Technologies," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 11 (1994): 205-30;
99. Dana L. Cloud, "Hegemony or Concordance? The Rhetoric of Tokenism in 'Oprah' Winfrey's Rags-to-Riches Biography," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 13 (1996): 115-37.
100. McGee, "Origins of 'Liberty,'" 25.
101. Hariman, Political Style, 9.
102. Michael Calvin McGee, "An Essay on the Flip Side of Privacy," in Argument in Transition: Proceedings of the Third Summer Conference on Argumentation, ed. David Zarefsky, Malcolm O. Sillars, and Jack Rhodes (Annandale, VA: Speech Communication Association, 1983), 109.
103. Of course, Americans are very careful not to describe children literally as "property." They are not property in the legal sense. However, the boundaries of "privacy" are governed by a wider sense of ownership. McGee characterizes property in this wider sense as "anything associated with a person's Being ... everything from one's wife and children to the land to the right to hold office, or go to a particular church." McGee, "Essay on the Flip," 107.