Presidential Demeanor

Some great observations about the Obamas' visit to London, and what Europe's response to the way the President and First Lady carried themselves suggests about USA-EU relations.

This essay will be useful when teaching students about class (in)visibility (Obama shaking the police officer's hand a 10 Downing Street) and Bourdieu's concept of habitus.

"The other thing that she [Mrs. Obama] rose above was Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip: Honey, we shrunk the royal family. If ever we needed a totemic image of the merits of a republic over a monarchy, this was it."

"The truth is that the French have never really got over being dumped at the altar of the “special relationship.” It should have been them. It was after all, the French who gave you the Statue of Liberty and the keys to the Bastille and who think Jerry Lewis is funny. What did the English ever give you? Muffins and a burnt White House."

Joking aside, it's true: the French are unfairly dumped on in the US. I suspect it has a lot to do with military-related issues, e.g. De Gaulle pulling France out of NATO's military (but not political) structure and evicting NATO forces from the country. So, I'll want to supplement this essay with reading about economics and social mobility. Given many Americans' proclivity for ill-informed patriotism, students need to know that it's more likely for a person born poor to move out of poverty in France than it is in the US. 

But as this piece to suggests, America should feel proud about their First Family. 

(Now, if only the Obama administration would listen to Paul Krugman...)

Original Intent

Unfazed

After Identity, Politics

Thank you Lorrie Moore for rejecting the Clintonistas' sentimental appeals for female votes by reminding us of the Clintons' conservative political record and thank you even more for stating what no male educator dares to say in a public forum:

The children who are suffering [most] in this country, who are having trouble in school, and for whom the murder and suicide rates and economic dropout rates are high, are boys — especially boys of color, for whom the whole educational system, starting in kindergarten, often feels a form of exile, a system designed by and for white girls.

Pre-election discussions should be about material issues (rising inequality, a rotting infrastructure, health care, the cost of war, etc.) not about sentimental symbolic issues (role models). It's the 21st century people -- time to move beyond the identity politics that have paralyzed the American left.

Puncturing the Pinhead Pundits (Who Promote Faux Patriotism)

Bill Maher mocks the ostentatious display of patriotic symbols on the grounds that these accessories simply provide cover to faux patriots, people eager to give the illusion that they're supporting the country, the troops, the military, etc. but who would prefer not to make an actual sacrifice.

Kudos to Maher for his spirited defense of Barack Obama's explanation for not wearing an American flag lapel pin (the pins have become a "substitute for true patriotism") and for calling the mainstream media, including ABC's Claire Shipman, for its blantant hypocrisy and for manufacturing faux news events. The punditocracy promotes the notion that political candidates should be judged according to nebulous and subjective criteria such as "authenticity" and "character" and candidates who don't spout the predictable platitudes the pundits and their handlers want to hear are quickly deemed "unelectable."

Thanks to Jim for e-mailing me this article. On the one hand, I'm glad to get some breathing room here in Sweden from the moronic press coverage of the US presidential race. The vacuousness of the discourse is especially apparent when you're outside looking in to the fishbowl. On the other hand, I'm fascinated by the techniques used to depoliticize the public sphere by diverting attention away from real problems that the government leaders need to confront, e.g., the rotting infrastructure, the health-care crisis, the declining standard of living, the rising debt, etc. And these are just a few of the domestic issues.

How to have all men against you

George W. Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People (2001):

Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.

Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Wanderer and His Shadow"(1880):

How to have all men against you. -- If anyone dared to say now, 'Whoever is not for me, is against me,' he would immediately have all men against him. -- This does our time honor.

Aesthetic Ideology: The Politics of Language

Leading neocons exress despair at the Bush Administration's incompetence in Neo Culpa: Politics & Power.

As a literary critic with a keen interest in the relationship between affect and meaning, I'm intrigued by the implicit understanding of how language works in this quote by David Frum:

"I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And that is the root of, maybe, everything."

Notice how Frum avoids talking about trying to convince Bush to believe in a particular position. Instead of referring to reasons and arguments, he imagines a sort of understanding via osmosis. In this fantasy, ideas are objectified as the foundational substance of words, and these ideas, once spoken, get absorbed by the body, like lotion. Indeed, it's not even clear that "understanding" is the right term here, since Frum talks about a feeling - a committed feeling - towards ideas rather than a belief in them.

Thank you, Mr. Frum, for providing a textbook example of how a neo-Platonic, logocentric model of language can prove to be disastrous.

John Ashcroft On Belief: Why Christianity? It's Easy

In this short but telling interview John Ashcroft basically attributes his embrace of evangelical Christianity to the fact that it provides him an "easy" means of excusing his sins. He explains, "I'm a Christian for a variety of reasons. Maybe because it's easy. What I have to do to please God is to confess that I'm a sinner instead of trying to prove that I am good."

Well, at least Ashcroft knows he's a bad man. But as Sartre would put it, Ashcroft is acting in bad faith by objectifying himself as a being-in-itself, in this case a sinner, whose identity is fixed. By failing to imagine that he could at least work at doing good in the world, Ashcroft denies our capacity for freedom.

Of course, this denial of freedom is completely consistent with his political views and deeds and helps explain his defense of the Patriot Act and, in this interview, a failure to recognize the universal applicability of the Geneva Conventions.

Now, I'm no theologian, but Ashcroft's last sentence is particularly perverse, in the psychoanalytic sense. That is, for Ashcroft Christianity is all about becoming one of the elect who knows how to provide pleasure for the Other. Ashcroft fantasizes that he pleasures God by confessing his sins, which, conveniently, absolves him of having to "prove that I am good."

Note how self-absorbed Ashcroft's framework for conceptualizing religion is. In the individualistic binary he establishes, it's all about him, John Ashcroft. Religion is either about proving that one is good, or, in his version of Christianity, pleasing God. Either way there's no consideration about one's responsibility to act as Christlike as possible in this world, which we share with God's creatures and our brothers and sisters, nor is there any sense of how difficult it is to perform good acts and deeds in a fallen world.

Clearly, Ashcroft needs to ask What Would Zizek Do? and listen to a little of that rock 'n' roll music.

As St. Paul sings, "Absolution is out of the question..."

No Answers from this Bush

Around this time during an election year, we're all sick to death of being bombarded with political ads, the majority of which do little to educate the public about the way a politician has voted in the past and will likely vote in the future on specific issues. Instead of providing useful, accurate information, (which, it should be noted, can be found relatively easily online, if one is willing and knows how to search for it) these ads, whether they are attacking a politician's opponent or heralding the candidate, tend to dumb down everything in a crude effort to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Consequently, political ads usually remind me of the perverse state our union is in at present. The United States has become a virtual plutocracy, thanks in no small part, to the government's giveaway of the public airwaves to corporate broadcasters who have a media monopoly that puts tremendous constraints on the range of political discourse and debate. The situation that requires candidates to waste loads of time and money to publicize themselves and get their "message" across on TV and radio to potential voters.

But this ad by The September Fund is different. It's brilliantly simple. Please watch it.

Alternative Interrogation Techniques

Students in my American Literature and Culture class are busy compiling examples of various tropes, figures of speech, that turn up in their readings, both novels and nonfiction. Although I'm confident that most have a fairly firm grasp on euphemism, I'll have to refer them to the following article by Andrew Sullivan to demonstrate why the ability to identify tropes is no purely 'academic' exercise.

Sullivan's article addresses the ongoing debates in the United States regarding the legality of torturing terror suspects by drawing attention to the way ethical considerations have been circumvented. The torture debates have degenerated into battles over the Bush Administration's efforts to redescribe "torture" as "alternative interrogation techniques," "coercive interrogation," or "harsh interrogation methods." Could we find a more pressing, or dangerous, instance of euphemism?

In general, I'm no fan of Sullivan, a gay Republican whose endorsement of the GOP's homophobic platform seems awfully opportunistic and cowardly, but it's refreshing to hear a conservative citing Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" in opposition to Bushco's use of doublespeak. In contrast to the obfuscating rhetoric on torture issued from the likes of Rumsfeld and Bush, Sullivan's argument is straightforward: Torture by any other name is just as vile.

The problem is that the very act of debating publicly whether, in some instances, torture should be tolerated and permitted changes the parameters of what actions are permissible in liberal-democratic states. The unthinkable--state-sponsored torture--has now become a viable option.

Now that the Bushies have effectively legitimized torture, it will require a concerted political effort to make the practice taboo again. This effort will require people from across the political spectrum to collaborate. Most likely, in a familiar political paradox, in the United States it will be a conservative politician like John McCain, who has acquired a certain kind of political capital that will prevent him from being branded as being "soft on terror," that will be most effective in leading the opposition to state-sponsored torture.

When Bathos Trumps Analysis: Remembering 9/11

For the commercial broadcast media, the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks provided an opportunity to boost ratings through sentimental remembrances that compelled viewers "to think instead of feel." For Susan Douglas, a profession of communications at the University of Michigan, the lack of journalistic integrity has perpetuated the circulation of propaganda, misinformation, and lies that have served the Bush Administration, if not the United States, so well during its reign.

With a couple rhetorical questions, Douglas suggests how the media should have responded after 9/11, had they taken their mission to inform the public seriously:

How might the broadcast media have analyzed the path since 9/11 if it were non-commercial, not so craven for ratings and had the stomach for self-examination? Might we see an examination of the collapse of journalistic skepticism and backbone in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, or an expose of the Bush administration's blanketing the media with propaganda and PR techniques, or an explanation that bush squandered every ounce of goodwill we had in the aftermath of 9/11, or a reflection on the unnecessary killing of so many U.S. troops and Iraqis, or a condemnation of our country's use of torture?

Thus, the tragedy of those victims who lost their lives in the 9/11 attacks is compounded by a subsequent tragedy: the lack of fair, accurate and thorough reporting on the Bush administration's "War on Terror."

Douglas's call for analysis over bathos is sound, but it will take systemic structural changes in our corporatized, profit-driven media if we're to see the kind of informative, investigative journalism that we need.

One looming problem: Who will subsidize a media independent enough to produce intelligent, analytic investigative journalism, which is, of course, much more costly than producing news programs that superficially cover events?

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Kundera on his novel:

This story is not allegory. But my book is a polyphony in which various stories mutually explain, illumine, complement each other. The basic event of the book is the story of totalitarianism, which deprives people of memory and thus retools them into a nation of children. All totalitarianisms do this. And perhaps our entire technical age does this, with its cult of the future, its cult of youth and childhood, its indifference to the past and mistrust of thought. In the midst of a relentlessly juvenile society, an adult equipped with memory and irony feels like Tamina on the isle of children.

Much to consider here, but what grabbed my attention was the analogy Kundera makes between totalitarianism and postmodern technocratic society. He sees the two forces as similar in that they work to infantilize the population by denying people a sense of history. Memory and irony are presented as two potential counterforces. I may want to bring Kundera's views - and the literary aesthetic that they imply - to bear on the American postmodernists about whom I'm writing.

First question: How durable is the link Kundera makes between totalitarianism and technocracy? At what point does the comparison break down and why?

Second question: How do Kundera's remarks about totalitarianism, made, I believe, in the mid 1980s and based on his first-hand experience of living under Soviet rule, apply to the world today: a neoliberal world order of global networks in which the U.S. is said to be the sole superpower?

File Under Posthistoricism

The conventional wisdom is that a Democratic Party in which Moulitsas calls the shots would cater to every whim of its liberal base. But though he can match Michael Moore for shrillness, the most salient thing about Moulitsas's politics is not where he falls on the left-right spectrum (he's actually not very far left). It's his relentless competitiveness, founded not on any particular set of political principles, but on an obsession with tactics - and in particular, with the tactics of a besieged minority, struggling for survival: stand up for your principles, stay united, and never back down from a fight. "They want to make me into the latest Jesse Jackson, but I'm not ideological at all," Moulitsas told me, "I'm just all about winning."

This quote comes from a profile of Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, described as "the world's biggest political blogger." I found the piece frustrating. While I'm all for Democrats toughening up 'their game,' i.e., developing plans to thwart the Republican's Rove-style tactics, I am dubious about an ostensible political leader who claims to be beyond ideology - if that is supposed to mean an abandonment of political principles.

On the one hand, it's a mistake to frame political debates exclusively in terms of overly abstract - what a Hegelian would dub "empty" - principles such as "freedom" or whatever. On the other hand, I don't want a political party (Democrats or otherwise) where winning elections is all that matters. I want to see a truly progressive political party in the United States - one that is concerned about real-world results - reducing material inequalities and improving living conditions for all Americans, not just the those in the top 20% or whatever of the income bracket.

Tropes and Topoi in Postmodern American Fiction (and Theory)

Dangerous Communication.
The Book of Daniel. Doctorow, E.L. (1971):
"Susan had communicated with me; just that; at if now in our lives only extreme and dangerous communication was possible, nevertheless the signal had been sent, discharged even, from the spasm of soul that was required--and that was the sense of summons I felt sneaking up over the afternoon like a blanket of burned space around my ears. And all my life I have been trying to escape from my relatives and I have been intricate in my run, but one way or another they are what you come upon around the corner, and the Lord God who is so frantic for recognition says you have to ask how they are and would they like something cool to drink, and what is it you can do for them this time" (30).

This passage concerns the imperative to act that Daniel Isaacson Lewin feels in the aftermath of his sister's suicide attempt. Indeed, Susan's suicide attempt is precisely the "dangerous communication" being alluded to in this passage. Daniel has just come upon the package of "Gillette Super Stainless blades" (29) in Susan's Volvo. This tableau triggers a kind of perverse epiphany for Daniel, prompting him to recognition of sorts. At this moment, "Daniel got the picture," that is, he experiences a sense "of being summoned." Doctorow leaves it up to his readers to figure out what exactly this summoning entails and whether or not the breakthrough or epiphany that Daniel experiences is productive. I would argue that the fact that moments later Daniel will be tormenting his wife in the Volvo, possibly branding her ass, suggests that we should be skeptical of the entire premise of "dangerous communication," even though the text we are reading, Daniel's book, is being presented as something of an outgrowth of Daniel's sense that he must communicate.

The way I prefer to read this passage is to regard it as a scene of political interpellation. Daniel is hailed by Susan to acknowledge his connectedness to the relatives from whom he has "been trying to escape" (30). What makes the interpellation political is that Daniel's parents are the Isaacsons, internationally infamous Communists who were executed as atomic spies. At this moment in the novel, Daniel realizes that he cannot deny or run from his parent's political legacy, which others will always associate him with. What Daniel must confront is the fact that because he is 'always already' identified with the Isaacsons, he must choose how he will position himself in relation to their political beliefs. This confrontation is traumatic and both Susan and Daniel respond to it with violence. Susan attempts suicide and Daniel torments Phyllis, his wife. This is all to suggest, I think, that "dangerous communication" is a shorthand way of equating violence with the transmission of meaning, or, more generally, of equating force with understanding (an equation common to postmodern fiction and theory). Ultimately, I think Doctorow would have us recognize the falsity of the novel's "vicious eroticism," that is, the sadistic sex scenes in which Daniel attempts to teach Phyllis by testing her bodily limits are intended to demonstrate the error in construing learning as the transmission of experience. (See also: fantasy of transmitted experience).

Dissemination, communication as.
The Book of Daniel. Doctorow, E.L. (1971):
“Susan had communicated with me; just that; and if now in our lives only extreme and dangerous communication was possible, nevertheless the signal had been sent, discharged even, from the spasm of the soul that was required—and that was the sense of summons I felt sneaking up over the afternoon like a blanket of burned space around my ears” (30, italics mine).

This passage is one of the most important in the entire novel as it (1) establishes a link between the text’s vicious eroticism and what I take to be a typically postmodern of communication as a material act of (bodily) transmission and (2) imagines this communicative act to be foundational to a character’s sense of self-identity. The point of Daniel’s epiphany in the parking lot is not simply that he recognizes Susan’s suicide attempt to be a specific type of communication (extreme and dangerous) but also that now this is the only possible mode of communication available to the Isaacson children. By italicizing some of the peculiar words Daniel uses to describe Susan’s suicide, I’ve tried to foreground the abject, erotic and material manner in which imagines communication as dissemination. Daniel does not speak here of, say, what Susan might have meant by her suicide or the beliefs that could have contributed to her decision to take her own life. Instead, of the message, Daniel focuses on the signal, which he figures using a blatanly sexual image—it is a load of semen being ejaculated from a spasming body. (See also: dangerous communication).

End of History (or post-historicism)
Revolution at the Gates. Zizek, Slavoj.
"...the First World and the Third World can no longer be simply opposed as distinct political unities: they are developing more and more within each political unity (state, city)? So when, a decade ago, Francis Fukuyama launched his pseudo-Hegelian thesis on the 'end of history', he was right, although not in the way he thought: in so far as the proper opposite of history is nature, the 'end of history' means that the social process itself is more and more 'naturalized', experienced as a new form of 'fate', as a blind uncontrollable force" (Zizek, Revolution at the Gates).

Vineland. Pynchon, Thomas. (1990):
Frenesi and Flash living in the witness protection program in Vineland: “They had both been content to leave it that way, to go along in a government-defined history without consequences, never imagining it could end, turn out to be only another Reaganite dream on the cheap, some snoozy fantasy about kindly character actors in FBI suits staked out all night long watching over every poor scraggly sheep in the herd it was their job to run, the destined losers whose only redemption would have to come through their usefulness to the State law-enforcement apparatus, which was calling itself “America,” although somebody must have known better” (Vineland 354).

Election 2004: Cognitive Mapping

Maps and cartograms of the election that attempt to represent population and strength of support.

Claire E. Rasmussen
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science and International Relations
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716