“Strictly an act of street violence”: intimate publicity and affective divestment in the New Orleans Mother’s Day shooting

ABSTRACT

On May 12, 2013, two men opened fire on a Mother’s Day second line parade in New Orleans’s Seventh Ward. This essay attends to discourses from public officials and news media following the shooting that reified what we describe as affective divestment from the suffering of historically marginalized bodies and communities. Specifically, public discourse characterized the shooting as an episode of “street violence” that did not warrant sustained national attention. Affective divestment is the consequence of rhetorical maneuvers that signal a pushing away from certain bodies by intimate publics—an estrangement at the symbolic level that has naturalized or rationalized the neglect of certain forms of suffering. Such estrangement, we argue, is a function of neoliberal logics that devalue and, at times, necessitate the suffering of disposable populations.

KEYWORDS:

• Affect
• intimate publics
• neoliberalism
• New Orleans
• violence

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for guidance and assistance from William Saas, David Terry, Stephanie Houston Grey, Nicole Magee, Liz Sills, the two anonymous reviewers, and editor D. Robert DeChaine and his staff. This essay is dedicated to our former neighbors in New Orleans’s Seventh Ward and others with whom we share space, yet, because of various structural atrocities and affective divestments, still feel that persistent gulf between us.

Notes

1. “Police: 19 Hurt, Including Two Children, in NOLA Mother’s Day Shooting,” CBS News, 12 May 2013, http://cbsn.ws/29oVr0Z (accessed August 10, 2017).

2. Colleen Curry, “Three Dead, Including Child, in Boston Explosions,” ABC News, 15 April 2013, http://abcn.ws/29vCgPB (accessed August 10, 2017); Deborah Kotz, “Injury Toll from Marathon Bombings Rises,” The Boston Globe, 23 April 2013, http://bit.ly/29ntgKo (accessed August 10, 2017). Also see James Barron, “Children Were All Shot Multiple Times With a Semiautomatic, Officials Say,” The New York Times, 15 December 2012, http://nyti.ms/29nsvBj (accessed August 10, 2017); Dan Frosch and Kirk Johnson, “Gunman Kills 12 in Colorado, Reviving Gun Debate,” The New York Times, 20 July 2012, http://nyti.ms/29RO7qE (accessed August 10, 2017).

3. “Police: 19 Hurt, Including Two Children, in NOLA Mother’s Day Shooting.”

4. See Debbie Elliott, “New Orleans Struggles with Murder Rate, and Trust,” NPR, 5 July 2012, http://n.pr/29zlDWm (accessed August 10, 2017).

5. David Dennis, “Why Isn’t New Orleans Mother’s Day Parade Shooting a ‘National Tragedy’?” The Guardian, 15 May 2013, http://bit.ly/29nsSLX (accessed August 10, 2017), para. 12. Also see Chris Hayes, “All in with Chris Hayes for May 13, 2013,” MSNBC, 13 May 2013, Lexis/Nexis Academic (accessed August 10, 2017); Hamilton Nolan, “Terrorism and the Public Imagination,” Gawker, 13 May 2013, http://bit.ly/29knNrP (accessed August 10, 2017); Melissa Harris-Perry, Raul Reyes, Ari Melber, Joe Watkins, and Trymaine Lee, “Melissa Harris-Perry for May 18, 2013,” MSNBC, 18 May 2013, Lexis/Nexis Academic (accessed August 10, 2017).

6. For this project, we performed Lexis/Nexis Academic searches of one major national newspaper (The New York Times) and one major national news network (ABC). We limited our search to one month following the Mother’s Day shooting and used the sole keyword “New Orleans.” We selected two prominent national news sources in order to ascertain national, as opposed to local, coverage of the shooting. Our one-month timeframe was largely the consequence of the fact that mentions of the Mother’s Day shooting vanished after this period.

7. Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Picador, 2003), 7.

8. Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior’s Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997). Also see Gerard A. Hauser, Prisoners of Conscience: Moral Vernaculars of Political Agency (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2012).

9. See Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969).

10. See, for example, Shane Borrowman and Marcia Kmetz, “Divided We Stand: Beyond Burkean Identification,” Rhetoric Review 30 (2011): 275–92; Jaclyn Howell, “Not Just Crazy: An Explanation for the Resonance of the Birther Narrative,” Communication Monographs 79 (2012): 428–47; Robert L. Ivie, “Fighting Terror by Rite of Redemption and Reconciliation,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 10 (2007): 221–48.

11. Nicole Magee, “Saving Sex Slaves: The A21 Campaign and the Mobilization of Christian Affect,” (master’s thesis, University of Southern Mississippi, 2014), 9–12.

12. Christian Lundberg, “Enjoying God’s Death: The Passion of the Christ and the Practices of an Evangelical Public,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 95 (2009): 387–411.

13. Deborah B. Gould, Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s Fight against AIDS (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 31. Also see Erin J. Rand, Reclaiming Queer: Activist and Academic Rhetorics of Resistance (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2014); Gregory J. Seigworth and Melissa Gregg, “An Inventory of Shimmers,” in The Affect Theory Reader, eds. Seigworth and Gregg (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 1–25.

14. Lauren Berlant, “Intimacy: A Special Issue,” Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 281–88. Also see Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1997), 7–8. On neoliberalism in general, see Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003); Stuart Hall, “The Neo-Liberal Revolution,” Cultural Studies 25 (2011): 705–28; David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005).

15. Berlant, “Intimacy,” 288.

16. Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004), 32.

17. Ibid., 30. Emphasis added.

18. Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, 99–100.

19. While this essay relies on journalistic texts to mobilize our analysis, we do not attribute affective divestment to the intentions of media workers. Rather, we understand news coverage following the Mother’s Day shooting as symptomatic of a broader cultural politics of intimacy and violence, as well as the political economy thereof. On the role of news media in the politics of race and class, see Deepa Kumar, “Media, Class, and Power: Debunking the Myth of a Classless Society,” in Class and News, ed. Don Heider (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004), 6–21; Jimmie L. Reeves and Richard Campbell, Cracked Coverage: Television News, the Anti-Cocaine Crusade, and the Reagan Legacy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994).

20. Richard Campanella, “Gentrification and its Discontents: Notes from New Orleans,” New Geography, 1 March 2013, http://bit.ly/29oZVVe (accessed August 10, 2017); Roberta Brandes Gratz, “Why Was New Orleans’s Charity Hospital Allowed to Die?,” The Nation, 27 April 2011, http://bit.ly/29vIz5w (accessed August 10, 2017); Lyndsey Layton, “In New Orleans, Major School District Closes Traditional Public Schools for Good,” The Washington Post, 28 May 2014, http://wapo.st/1tTBvCI (accessed August 10, 2017); Brittany Libson, “River Garden: New Orleans’ Model for Mixed Income Housing?,” Social Policy 37 (2007): 98–105; Adriane Quinlan, “Hurricane Katrina Leaves a Quiet Hush over New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward,” The Times-Picayune, 28 August 2013, http://bit.ly/29p0dvi (accessed August 10, 2017); John Simerman, “NOPD Chief Ronal Serpas Faces Cynical Crowd on Racial Profiling Questions,” The Times-Picayune, 27 March 2013, http://bit.ly/29BaYrx (accessed August 10, 2017).

21. Mike Davis, City of Slums (London: Verso, 2006), 174–98.

22. On the range of structural challenges facing New Orleans’s most vulnerable citizens, and some of the efforts to address them, see Jordan Flaherty, Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2010). On conceptualizing structural determinants as violent, see Slavoj Žižek, Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (New York: Picador, 2008).

23. Duggan, The Twilight of Equality?

24. Josh Elliott, “News Headlines,” Good Morning America, 13 May 2013, Lexis/Nexis Academic (accessed August 10, 2017).

25. Ibid.

26. Butler, Precarious Life.

27. On such characterizations of racialized urban spaces, see Reeves and Campbell, Cracked Coverage.

28. Campbell Robertson and Katy Reckdahl, “Celebrating, in Spite of the Risk,” The New York Times, 14 May 2013, http://nyti.ms/29nuu8O (accessed August 10, 2017), para. 4.

29. See Mark Greenblatt and Carol McKinley, “James Holmes’ Psychiatrist Contacted University Police Weeks before Movie-Theater Shooting: ABC Exclusive,” ABC News, 6 August 2012, http://abcn.ws/29llfGg (accessed August 10, 2017); Liza Long, “‘I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother’: A Mom’s Perspective on the Mental Illness Conversation in America,” The Huffington Post, 16 December 2012, http://huff.to/29tnV7j (accessed August 10, 2017); Jordan Smith, “How to Unpack the Tsarnaevs’ Real Motives,” Salon, 16 May 2013, http://bit.ly/29B8bi1 (accessed August 10, 2017).

30. For example, Rolling Stone was widely criticized for featuring Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on their cover following the marathon bombing. See Erik Wemple, “Rolling Stone Stands by Controversial Cover,” The Washington Post, 17 July 2013, http://wapo.st/29nu2Hk (accessed August 10, 2017).

31. Campbell Robertson, “Louisiana: 2 Arrested in Shootings at New Orleans Parade,” The New York Times, 16 May 2013, http://nyti.ms/29qCOpc (accessed August 10, 2017).

32. On the cultural politics of black masculinity, see Ronald L. Jackson III, Scripting the Black Masculine Body: Identity, Discourse, and Racial Politics in Popular Media (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2006); D. Marvin Jones, Race, Sex, and Suspicion: The Myth of the Black Male (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005). Also see Reeves and Campbell, Cracked Coverage.

33. Robertson and Reckdahl, “Celebrating, in Spite of the Risk.”

34. Richard Brent Turner, Jazz Religion, the Second Line, and Black New Orleans (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 3.

35. Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002); Robin D.G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: The Free Press, 1994).

36. Robertson and Reckdahl, “Celebrating, in Spite of the Risk.”

37. Ibid. On the policing of black vernacular expression, also see Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (New York: Picador, 2005).

38. Dennis, “Why Isn’t New Orleans Mother’s Day Parade Shooting a ‘National Tragedy’?”

39. Berlant, “Intimacy,” 281.

40. Josh Elliott, “Headline News,” Good Morning America, 13 May 2013, Lexis/Nexis Academic (accessed August 10, 2017).

41. “19 Wounded in New Orleans Shooting,” The New York Times, 13 May 2013, http://nyti.ms/29llYYg (accessed August 10, 2017)

42. Butler, Precarious Life, 32.

43. See Emily Bazelon, “‘You Allow Your Heart to be Broken Everyday,’” Slate, 12 June 2014, http://slate.me/29oYMgy (accessed August 10, 2017); Lenny Bernstein, “Boston Marathon Bombing Victims to Get $20 Million More,” The Washington Post, 27 June 2014, http://wapo.st/29RQFVA (accessed August 10, 2017).

44. See “19 Wounded;” Josh Elliott, “News Headlines,” Good Morning America, 13 May 2013, Lexis/Nexis Academic (accessed August 10, 2017); George Stephanopoulos and Robin Roberts, “Good Morning America,” Good Morning America, 13 May 2013, Lexis/Nexis Academic (accessed August 10, 2017).

45. “Bush: ‘We Will Do What It Takes,’” CNN, 15 September 2005, http://cnn.it/29RR76m (accessed August 10, 2017). On the federal response to Katrina, see Flaherty, Floodlines; Jed Horne, Breach of Faith: Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City (New York: Random House, 2008).

46. See Ken Daley, “Bourbon Street Shooting Suspect Fights Extradition from Mississippi,” The Times-Picayune, 7 July 2014, http://bit.ly/29toXAk (accessed August 10, 2017); Ken Daley, “Bourbon Street Shootings Become Homicide Case as 21-Year-Old Nursing Student Dies,” The Times-Picayune, 2 July 2014, http://bit.ly/29nv32j (accessed August 10, 2017); Robert McClendon, “After Bourbon Street Shooting, Tourism Industry Puts on a Brave Face,” The Times-Picayune, 29 June 2014, http://bit.ly/29B9X2y (accessed August 10, 2017); Richard Rainey, “Bourbon Street Shootings Prompt Jindal to Send 50 State Troopers to New Orleans through Labor Day,” The Times-Picayune, 3 July 2014, http://bit.ly/29kBToU (accessed August 10, 2017); Amy Robach, David Muir, and Ryan Smith, “Headline News,” Good Morning America, 30 June 2014, Lexis/Nexis Academic (accessed August 10, 2017), para. 7–10.

47. Chris Hayes, All in with Chris Hayes.

48. Joe Nocera, “Weekend Gun Report: May 10–12, 2013,” The New York Times Blogs, 13 May 2013, http://nyti.ms/29BaeTg (accessed August 10, 2017).

49. Rebecca Bond, “A Mother’s (Day) View of the Gun Debate,” The Huffington Post, 12 May 2013, http://huff.to/29r1HUv (accessed August 10, 2017).

50. See Michael K. Brown, Martin Carnoy, Elliott Currie, Troy Duster, David B. Oppenheimer, Marjorie M. Shultz, and David Wellman, White-Washing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).

51. Louis Armstrong and Billie Holliday, “Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?,” Definitive Vocal Duets, mp3, Ideal Music, 2012.

52. For a typical story, see Clint Durrett, “NOPD Investigates ‘Unclassified Death’ in Seventh Ward,” WDSU.com, 29 June 2014, http://bit.ly/29xmo0D (accessed August 10, 2017).