How Propaganda Became Public Relations

Foucault and the Corporate Government of the Public

Cory Wimberly

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367263140
• eBook ISBN: 9781000753530
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Public Relations

How Propaganda Became Public Relations pulls back the curtain on propaganda: how it was born, how it works, and how it has masked the bulk of its operations by rebranding itself as public relations. Cory Wimberly uses archival materials and wide variety of sources — Foucault's work on governmentality, political economy, liberalism, mass psychology, and history — to mount a genealogical challenge to two commonplaces about propaganda. First, modern propaganda did not originate in the state and was never primarily located in the state; instead, it began and flourished as a for-profit service for businesses. Further, propaganda is not focused on public beliefs and does not operate mainly through lies and deceit; propaganda is an apparatus of government that aims to create the publics that will freely undertake the conduct its clients' desire.

Businesses have used propaganda since the early twentieth century to construct the laboring, consuming, and voting publics that they needed to secure and grow their operations. Over that time, corporations have become the most numerous and well-funded apparatuses of government in the West, operating privately and without democratic accountability. Wimberly explains why liberal strategies of resistance have failed and a new focus on creating mass subjectivity through democratic means is essential to countering propaganda.

This book offers a sophisticated analysis that will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in social and political philosophy, Continental philosophy, political communication, the history of capitalism, and the history of public relations.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: From Propaganda to Public Relations
• 1 What Does Propaganda Do?
• 2 Propaganda Contra Liberalism
• 3 The Art and Science of Controlling Minds: The Influence of Political Economy and French Royalists on Public Relations
• 4 Governing Mr. and Mrs. Intelligent Quotient Minus: Lineages of Crowd Psychology in the Governmentality of Propaganda
• 5 Crossing the Atlantic, Propaganda’s New Problematization for Corporate America
• 6 Edward Bernays and the Interacting Forces That Govern Public Opinion
• 7 Grappling With Propaganda Today
• Index