Cultures of rejection can be understood as ‘regimes of practices’ defined by Foucault as an

intersection of rules that govern ‘what can be said’ and ‘what can be done’ (Foucault 2001: 225).
Paul Veyne claims that Foucault saw practices as ‘what people do’ meaning that we can define
them as any kind of social action (Veyne 1997: 153). Following Foucault’s understanding of
regimes of practices we can define cultures of rejection as systems of norms that structure and
guide discursive and non-discursive practices. In this way cultures of rejection resemble what
Raymond Williams called ‘structures of feeling’ since they are a form of practical consciousness
that structures everyday life (Williams 1977: 132). Therefore we can say that cultures of
rejection form a ‘texture’ of social life because they consist of norms which ‘weave’ together
many different kinds of practices into a heterogeneous assemblage (de la Fuente 2019: 3–5).

In accordance with this our research will focus on the ways cultures of rejection structure
practices through everyday life as a place of social interaction which cuts through different
spheres of a social totality (Lefebvre 1991: 42) like politics, culture and the economy. Following
de Certeau we will be researching systems of ‘operational combination’ that according to him are
everyday practices through which individuals produce elements of culture (De Certeau 1988: 10–
11). He uses de Saussure’s differentiation between language as an abstract system of rules and
speech as a manifestation of its use to point out that everyday practices can be seen as a poesis
through which individuals use existing cultural resources to produce a multitude of different
meanings and discourses (De Certeau 1988: 12). Unlike de Certeau whose aim is to study
everyday practices as free and creative our aim is to research cultures of rejection as cultural
resources which structure them. Therefore we will study everyday practices in order to see how
cultures of rejection are used to create discourses through which the world is made meaningful.

The world of everyday life consists of different social spaces that can be defined as
arrangements of individuals and their interactions which therefore means they are locations
where everyday practices are reproduced (Löw 2016: 188). Since one part of our research
focused on retail and logistics workers their workspace was one of the spaces of everyday life we
have researched. The second part of our research will focus on discursive practices in digital
space as a specific kind of space that exists virtually and through which individuals interact,
share ideas and create like-minded communities (Cubitt 2006: 118). This part of our research
will focus on how cultures of rejection intersect with the COVID-19 pandemic. More precisely,
the pandemic will be seen as a ‘historical conjuncture’ that Glenn defines as a “series of causes
which have a predominant effect on the production of practices and ideas” (Glenn 2019: 31).
This means that we will research how the norms cultures of rejection consist of influence
discursive practices surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.

We will now look more closely at the internal mechanisms of cultures of rejection and
present our understanding of how the norms they consist of function. As we will show cultures
of rejection have two basic mechanisms: ‘othering’ and ‘affective mobilization’. ‘Othering’ is a
mechanism through which cultures of rejection create identities by excluding certain social
categories and groups. Stuart Hall claims that identities are created through a process of
‘identification’ which entails a discursive practice that would ‘suture’ the individual to a specific
identity (Hall 1996: 2–3). For Hall identification is successful if a subject starts narrating his own
self in a certain way and thus takes up a specific subject position that has been created for him by
discursive practices (Hall 1996: 4–6). This means that the first mechanism of cultures of
rejection necessitates creating identities as ‘discursive formations’ (Foucault 2002: 41) that
would be used by individuals to structure their own self-narrative (Schechtman 2011). Since they
have been created through the norms of cultures of rejection these discursive formations
structure individual identities as coherent by contrasting them with ‘others’. This means that the
norms of cultures of rejection that structure these discursive formations create identities through
the figure of the ‘constitutive other’. The ‘constitutive other’ is a figure that has been excluded
by the rules of the discursive formation as unacceptable and is thus marginalized (Butler 1999:
97). Butler claims that identities are formed as homogeneous through forces of exclusion by
creating an ‘outside’ as a domain of undesirable forms of subjectivity. But according to her they
are never fully constituted because this domain is a condition of their existence and is therefore
always ‘inside’ the identity at the same time (Butler 1993: 3).

The mechanism of affective mobilization is the way cultures of rejection subjectify

individuals by binding them to certain identities. More precisely, the rules of aforementioned
discursive formations ‘interpelate’ (Althusser 2014: 190) individuals by attaching certain
emotions to the structure of an identity they are constructing. This means that the interpelated
individual is invited to consider himself as an ‘affect structure’ (Isin 2004: 223; Fortier 2010:
21–22). The emotions which are related to the norms of cultures of rejection are usually tied to
fear and anxiety. Therefore the subject of cultures of rejection can be seen as a ‘neurotic citizen’
since the identity he has acquired invites him to manage his anxieties and insecurities (Isin 2004:
225; Fortier 2010: 19). As we have mentioned identities constructed by discursive formations in
accordance with the norms of cultures of rejection present the ‘other’ as an entity in relation to
which they are formed. Therefore it is the ‘other’ that is the primary source of anxiety since he is
at the same time a necessary component of identity and that which is outside of it (Balibar 2006:
30). This has been articulated by Isin who claims that contemporary governmentality uses
practices and technologies that are tying subjects affective structures with what he calls the
‘species-body’ of the nation (Isin 2004: 217–223). In this way the nation is presented to the
subject as his ‘home’ and as a sanctuary free of anxiety that should be defended from the ‘other’
that threatens it (Isin 2004: 230–232). Therefore cultures of rejection through discursive
formations that construct identities subjectify individuals by arranging their affective structures
so that they will see the ‘other’ as a source of fear and anxiety.

Studying cultures of rejection entails an approach that avoids de-politicized culturalizations

of social phenomena. The notion of cultures of rejection brings together macro structures of
power, economics and politics on the one side and micro structures of everyday practices on the
other side (Alexander 2016: 1433–1434). In this way our approach looks at how relations of
power work all the way to the psychic level (Butler 1997: 23–30) and offers an understanding of
contemporary ways of subject formation and how they relate to global social changes (Fortier
2016: 1042).

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