Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Manship School of Mass Communication
Document Type
Dissertation
Abstract
Communities are built on stories. Communities are also destroyed by stories. In this dissertation, I explore both. That Cancer Alley has negative effects on Black residents, or that Cancer Alley exists at all, is part of a story that is at once told by Black residents of Cancer Alley and yet denied by the local petrochemical industry that gave rise to its name. Through fourteen semi-structured qualitative interviews with twenty-six Black residents of Cancer Alley, I find that Black residents are using storytelling to tell counterstories that resist attempts by industry to disempower them and to define their experiences for them. By contrast, I find that industry in Cancer Alley is using storytelling—via public relations—to further entrench its corporate hegemonic influence over Black residents. Suffering, exploitation, and expropriation are part and parcel of Cancer Alley, but in the final analysis, the story of Cancer Alley is one of resistance, revolt, and empowerment by residents. If public relations is a way for industry to maintain its grip on Black residents, then telling counterstories is their way of subverting this iron fist. As a tool for survival and resistance against racism, this dissertation emphasizes that counterstorytelling among Black resident is a central component of cultural preservation, intergenerational communicative networks, and resistance.
In Part 1, the findings provide insight for applications of storytelling and counterstories, which arose as a form of critical legal inquiry, to non-legal contexts while still maintaining its dual juxtaposition of “in groups” and “out groups,” dominant and subaltern narratives. In Part 2, the findings provide insight for understanding the ways in which public relations erects, rather than lowers, barriers between stakeholders—specifically, between the petrochemical industry in Cancer Alley and Black residents in whose communities industry builds. Public relations, in this view, is part of a broader framework of psychological warfare and, relatedly, propaganda, that industry deploys in which communication and media take the place of armies and navies in pacifying potentially dissident or rebellious residents, coercing them into normalizing cancer, sickness, and death (or at least trying to).
Date
5-23-2025
Recommended Citation
Jordan, Joshua, "Breathing in Justice: Propaganda in Cancer Alley and its Relationship to Historic Black Communities" (2025). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 6808.
https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/6808
Committee Chair
Winfield, Asha S.
DOI
10.31390/gradschool_dissertations.6808
Included in
Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication Commons, Public Relations and Advertising Commons