Deconstructing Michael Jordan: Popular Culture, Politics, and Postmodern America

Michael Jordan is one of the most socially and culturally significant figures within late twentieth century America. Despite his current ubiquity in the diverse networks of the popular media, Jordan has largely been neglected by critical cultural analysts. In redressing what is clearly a serious oversight in contemporary cultural understanding, this dissertation provides a critical deconstruction of Jordan's place within a postmodern America dominated by mediated images. This substantive project is realized through the formulation of a synthesis between cultural studies and Jean Baudrillard's implosive postmodernism. Establishing such an interpretive space exhumes an innovative framework for deciphering Jordan's relationship to the techno-discursive vectors of Reaganism. Appropriated by Nike, and a multitude of other promotional interests, these reactionary cultural logics enveloped Jordan and molded him into an All-American commodity-sign which reinforced the fatalistic racial indifference of the New Right. Having deconstructed Jordan's position and influence upon the experiencing of everyday life in contemporary America, the dissertation concludes by pointing toward the problematics that need to be addressed in order to formulate a more politically progressive reading of Michael Jordan.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Kinesiology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• Andrews, David Lawrence

Contributors dc:contributor

• Denzin, Norman K.

• American Studies
• Sociology, General
• Mass Communications

Identifier

(UMI)AAI9411553

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/72499