I wrote a paper last semester applying some methods in rhetorical criticism to Naomi Klein’s recent book, “Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”. Here’s an excerpt from the paper that focuses on dissecting her book using the narrative critical method. Sorry if some of the John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, and communication theory references seem a bit out of context without the rest of the paper discussing their view points.
The method’s first step requires the communication theorist to analyze various dimensions of the narrative namely the events, settings, and causal relations in the narrative.
Events
Events are categorized into major (kernels) and minor (satellites) components.
Kernel – A major event in “The Shock Doctrine” is Milton Friedman authoring “Capitalism and Freedom”. This book outlines the fundamentalist ideals later applied to the developing countries. The application of these ideals is coined by Klein as ‘economic shock therapy’.
Kernel – Another major event depicted in the artifact is the education of economists from developing countries at the University of Chicago. These international students are taught the ideals of Friedman’s fundamentalist trifecta economic policy of privatizing government resources, removing all trade restrictions (taxes, embargos, subsidies), and massive cuts to social spending.
Satellite– A minor story line in Klein’s artifact is the CIA sanctioning of electroshock torture in Central American during the 1970s. This satellite consumes much of the beginning of “The Shock Doctrine” as Klein looks to draw parallels between the textbook application of electro-shock therapy and the application of Friedman’s neo-liberal fundamentalist economic policy
Setting
The setting of a narrative allows the theorist to identify the central action of the substance of the narrative and to define the experience.
What is central action of the substance?
The central action of the narrative revolves around multinational companies making money on natural resources of newly privatized government mining as well as previously publicly owned government services like telecommunications, water works, etc. Klein demonstrates that more times than not, this privatization is the result of poorly executed no bid contracts that often raise the price of goods and services to locals and/or sends a disproportionate amount of revenue out of the developing country.
What is the experience about?
People and countries are ‘shocked’ much the same way CIA sponsored electroshock torture destroyed the minds of torture victims in the late 20th century. Specifically, countries are shocked by wars, terror attacks, coups d’état and natural disasters. Then “they are shocked again by corporations and politicians who exploit the fear and disorientation of this first shock to push through economic shock therapy (Klein, 25).” Individuals who resist (usually labor union leaders, heads of opposition government parties, and social activists) are shocked for a third time, by police, soldiers and prison interrogators. The experience is about creating a blank slate of a country to build international (usually Western) private investment.
Now that the initial phase has identified dimensions of the narrative, I will perform the next step of the method and analyze the form and style present in the artifact. This can involve connecting the central action of the narrative to other elements found within the story as well as re-organizing the story into a coherent whole.
As mentioned throughout this analysis, the central action in the artifact is the application of the Milton Friedman’s fundamentalist economic policy and the effects of this pure form of capitalism felt by the working class. An important connection that Klein suggests is that Friedmanism has actually been applied on the U.S. Where once the U.S. solely experienced the positive impact of free trade (i.e. the abundance of extremely inexpensive diverse goods and natural resources available to the Western world), events like Hurricane Katrina and the second Iraq war produced fertile environments to quickly privatize segments of government services resulting in lack luster and expensive services.
The second aspect of analyzing the form and style in the artifact involves re- organizing the story into a coherent whole. One of the artifact’s culminating points seems to revolve around the application of this fundamentalist form of capitalism as a dominant ideology. A safe argument could be made that the intended audience of the artifact is the U.S. reader. That being said, if this narrative seeks to advocate change by dismissing Friedmanism, the rhetor could benefit by leading with a core example of Milton Friedman’s ideology applied to the audience itself (e.g. the second Iraq war or the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina). The narrative could also benefit from a discussion of the foundational ideology of Klein’s book. Discussing the positive (even the negative) aspects of John Maynard Keynes approach to economics would provide a richer context Klein could leverage as she makes her case against Milton Friedman’s purist application of capitalism. A discussion of Keynes would differentiate her position from Marxism, an ideology she attempts to distance herself from with just a few statements throughout her book.
The final step in the application of the narrative method poses the question, “Do we, the critic, accept the rhetor’s version of reality?” That answer is yes. The reality of free and open markets as experienced by the developing world is one where free trade is sold as a cure to an ill of a corrupt heads of state. Klein wants us to understand that these countries approach to publicly owned natural resources and government services aimed at protecting and aiding citizens is not the problem. Inserting the free market into these developing countries does not fix the problem of corruption. In fact, as Klein points out, it only facilitates it.
