Urban jungle, Ferguson: Rhetorical homology and institutional critique

ABSTRACT

In this article, I use the rhetorical homology of the urban jungle to conduct an institutional critique of law enforcement in Ferguson, MO, after Michael Brown was killed. Rhetorical homologies and institutions intersect where language and practice coalesce, which is to say where group consciousness takes material forms. I investigate how, in news coverage of Ferguson, a common form was present across verbal devices and nonverbal practices at macro and micro levels that constituted black neighborhoods as subterranean spaces that needed colonization or containment, as frontier scenes with a savage character logic imposed upon its residents. The homology inscribes particular meanings into black and white skin colors with Anglophile cultural codes, which establishes a savage/explorer binary and keeps black people and spaces invisible, impoverished, and susceptible to racialized policing. The tools of institutional critique—postmodern mapping, boundary interrogation, and micro/macro alignment—inform the discourses and practices of those entrusted to keep daily realities well ordered and organized and to safeguard the social systems of everyday life. Scholars can use homology as a strategy to decode why institutional representatives include some and exclude others, and how they naturalize violence in the name of public service.

KEYWORDS:

• Rhetorical homology
• institutional critique
• containment
• neocolonialism
• Ferguson
• Michael Brown

Acknowledgments

Stephen M. Underhill is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Marshall University. The author would like to thank Barbara Biesecker and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Notes

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