Flexible Positional Superiority of Whiteness in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution: A Foucauldian Genealogy on the Atlanta Beat, 2001–2003

Abstract

This study is a Foucauldian genealogy examining local media coverage of the Atlanta Beat. An archive of 432 newspaper clippings between February 2000 and September 2003 from The Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC) composed of advertisements, headlines, articles, and images on the Atlanta Beat was constructed to deconstruct discourses on professional women’s soccer; in particular, identifying a regime of truth and discontinuity in discourse from an intersectional approach. In doing so, the study accomplishes three objectives. First, it deconstructs the ideological shift from hegemonic masculinity to a postfeminist in AJC, the former of which decreasing through time. Second, the ideological undercurrent, regardless of hegemonic masculinity or postfeminist, was constituted around the norms, values, and lifestyle of an affluent, predominantly white, suburban demographic (i.e. Whiteness) and neoliberalism. This undercurrent creates a normative regime for discourse (i.e. regime of truth) on women’s professional soccer in AJC. In turn, this regime constituted narratives and conditional counter-narratives (i.e. discontinuity) on women of color which produced and reproduced Whiteness. This discursive flexibility is similar to Said’s concept of flexible positional superiority: the discursive position of white norms, values, and lifestyle are never undermined in the gendered symbolic racial hierarchy of sport and media.