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#HoldTight: Neoliberal affects, embodied hopes, and anticipatory chronotopes in corporate LGBTQ diversity discourse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2023

Joseph Comer Open the ORCID record for Joseph Comer [Opens in a new window]
Joseph Comer*
Affiliation:
University of Bern, Switzerland
*
Address for correspondence: Joseph Comer Centre for the Study of Language and Society University of Bern, Switzerland 116 South Elliott Place #2 Brooklyn, NY 11217, USA joseph.comer@unibe.ch
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Abstract

Across the contemporary world, neoliberalism operates as an anticipatory regime through which mediatised conceptions of the future are aligned to an aggressive (absolute) marketisation of social life. Alongside a critical, queer-theoretical attention to homonormativity, this article uses multimodal critical discourse studies techniques to analyse how such a neoliberal future for LGBTQ people is envisioned in #HoldTight, a pride campaign by an Australian and New Zealand bank. #HoldTight focused on how the act of holding hands can be turned from a source of shame to a joyful, powerful tool for social action: ‘if you feel like letting go, hold tight’. My cultural-phenomenological analysis of #HoldTight demonstrates how this imbrication of LGBTQ rights discourse and mediatised capitalism engaged embodied, hopeful affects as semiotic resources. In this way, I argue that the bank enshrined a speculative, anticipatory chronotope of a future better world, while validating neoliberal governmentality as a benevolent form of LGBTQ agency. (Neoliberalism, multimodal critical discourse studies, queer linguistics, affect, embodiment, cultural phenomenology)*

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Article
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Language in Society , First View , pp. 1 - 24
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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