Communication, carcerality, and neoliberal stigma: the case of hunger and food assistance in the United States

ABSTRACT Drawing on three strains of critical theory – Foucauldian biopolitics, critical race theory, and the work of sociologist Loic Wacquant – I argue that neoliberal stigma is foundational to the design of the food (assistance) system. Neoliberal stigma is constituted in the discursive practices of shame, suspicion, and surveillance, which are communicative and carceral technologies used to discipline poor and racialized communities in their efforts to manage hunger and poverty. These communicative technologies are rooted in anti-poor, racist, and carceral logics and are deployed against Black and Brown bodies negatively impacting health and social wellbeing. Drawing on the voices of people with lived experiences of hunger, I demonstrate the mundane and exceptional ways in which shame, suspicion, and surveillance emerge in discursive practices surrounding food assistance and how these practices enjoin food assistance and carcerality into a ‘single organizational contraption.’ The analysis ends with three broad interventions required to disrupt neoliberal stigma amid racist violence.