Brand New Zealand: Media Governmentality and Affective Biopower

Abstract

This thesis argues that in an age of brand identity and media governmentality, Brand New Zealand capitalizes on concepts of community, patriotism and nationhood to (re)frame Aotearoa New Zealand as a business enterprise, as Aotearoa New Zealand Incorporated. I claim that the branding phenomenon in general and nation-branding in particular represent, first, the (re)inscription and dominance of market imperatives on a global scale and, second, the rising influence of media governmentality as the predominant strategy of social control.

Media governmentality concerns, first and foremost, the constitution and organisation of affect, and branding is the structuring principle through which affect is appropriated and extracted. I coin the term ‘affective biopower’ to link Michel Foucault’s concepts of biopower and governmentality with affect and with the power inherent in productive sociality and in the human capacity for building a common. I characterize neoliberal government, not only in terms of particular economic policies and political rationality, but more precisely in terms of the production of subjectivity and the biopolitical regulation of the social through increasingly ubiquitous modes of media governmentality. At stake here is the problematic contradiction between direct forms of governance that address rational autonomous citizens of the neoliberal nation-state and indirect forms of governance that shape neoliberal subjectivity through the affective domains of brand identity and media culture. My specific contribution to this field of study consists in positing the concept of affective biopower as fundamental to brand logic and media governmentality and as key to governance in a neoliberal state. My study highlights the commodification of the social and the articulation of the social bond in terms of capitalist enterprise and focuses on the promotion and marketing of Aotearoa New Zealand. I situate affective biopower as the vital mode of production in contemporary capitalist relations and claim media networks and brand technologies access and harness affective biopower for global capital. What is most significant and relevant about this critical-theoretical approach is that it forefronts the crucial role of affect and affective biopower in normalizing brand society, media governmentality and neoliberal capitalism.