| The consequences of half a century of intensified processes of neoliberal globalization announce themselves in growing inequalities in affluent centers of global trade and in impoverished sites populated by exploited communities and resources. Political upheavals, social marginalizations, and economic insecurities introduced by these failures in both the Global South and the Global North constitute a tenuous common ground between diverse collectivities of struggle.;This dissertation takes this potential common ground between disparate communities marginalized by neoliberalism as a terrain on which to explore possible solidarities between these 'singularities of struggle.' It asks how local struggles waged by communities in the Global North and Global South contest and evade the conditions of neoliberalism, and what forms of political identity, collective identifications, and micropolitical power are invented in these struggles.;To answer these questions, Deleuze and Guattari's "State-form" and "war-machine" are mobilized as critical tools for conceptualizing how neoliberalism universalist assumptions are manifested in singular situations. Particular attention is given to the universally-singular expressions of material poverty, differential inclusion, and subordination wrought by neoliberal globalization, and the challenges these conditions create for theorizing common topoi of oppositional discourse, including identity, collectivity, and power.;Critical rhetoric, critical discourse analysis, and cultural studies help focus analysis on local communities in order to contribute to solving these theoretical problems. Taken together, these critical approaches help map the struggles of "SafeGround Sacramento," a group of homeless activists in Sacramento, CA, and the "Zapatista Army of National Liberation" (EZLN), a group of indigenous peasants struggling against neoliberalism in Chiapas, Mexico. The critical perspective developed in this dissertation examines performative and rhetorical interventions invented in each of these communities, and places them in dialogue to identify resonances that might contribute to other efforts at anti-neoliberal collective struggle.;Based on this analysis, conclusions identify these resonances as constituents of an anti-neoliberal war-machine that mobilizes militant semiotics, radical alterity, and minor politics to contest and disrupt machinations of neoliberalism. It also considers how the critical practice pursued in this study supplements extant developments in participatory, critical rhetorical studies. |
