Files
Abstract
This thesis aims to explore the commodification of exigency in consideration of the late capitalist, neoliberal era. In asserting a shift to the rhetorical circulation, I propose wedding Foucauldian and Marxist views in light of biopolitical production in order to position rhetoric as labor in the conception of circulation and value, and explain how rhetorical acts become commodifiable in a neoliberal era. The case study of the Green New Deal and its response provide an example of how such interplay works within the rhetoric surrounding the resolution. I argue that such politicizing of these urgencies turn them into commodified goods exchanged for their value. Exigency thus becomes a commodity which we use to raise our value in the labor of communication. Such an investigation highlights the prominent shift of exigency in rhetorical communication, as well as addressing the need for new ways of thinking about rhetoric in our current society.