bq. I’m not sure what Sarah Palin’s favorite work of postmodern theory might be (all of them, probably) but she seems to take her lead from Jean Baudrillard’s _Seduction._ Other political figures use the media as part of what JB calls “production.” That is, they generate signs and images meant to create an effect within politics. For the Baudrillardian “seducer,” by contrast, the power to create fascination is its own reward.
More from Scott, “here”:http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee265.
{ 18 comments }
Barry 11.18.09 at 7:06 pm
Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Beyond fonts, finally!
Substance McGravitas 11.18.09 at 7:08 pm
More critical reception:
http://whiskeyfire.typepad.com/whiskey_fire/2009/11/going-rogue-macht-man-denken.html
JM 11.18.09 at 8:38 pm
This kind of analysis usually degenerates into an extended metaphor.
I prefer to see Palin as the product of, and appealing to, the kind of tribalist identities that were so useful during a particular phase of American politics, during which fat times built on borrowed wealth reduced politics to a genre of entertainment for a lazy and self-absorbed generation that passed the time in archaist frottage. Her perpetual victimization whine is an extension of Reagan’s Real America, snubbed by nasty elites, the difference being that the goobers in the audience have swarmed the stage and taken over the show. But now that their disasters have piled up and the center of American politics is shifting to another huge generation that is both more urban and urbane, people like Palin are continuing their schtick without actually being involved in government.
Same con, smaller venues.
Yawn.
Martin Bento 11.18.09 at 10:24 pm
If Palin represents any generation, it would have to be her own: Gen X, as it used to be called, the generation that grew up in the wake of the boomer changes. And she is typical of our – her and my – generation in that she freely takes advantage of freedoms that the previous generation won for her without honoring the moral commitments that underlie those freedoms, respecting those who fought for them, or even seeing that they were won through struggle in living memory and are not just part of the inevitable order of things. That’s what is so ironic about her as an icon of social conservatism: by pre-boomer conservative values, a mother of five including an infant has no business with a (theoretically) full-time career at all, much less with seeking the Presidency. Palin is unthinkable without feminism. But she doesn’t respect feminism and will play to sexism whenever it suits her interests, or decry it whenever that suits her interests. For example, in one of the Alaska governor debates, the candidates were asked whether they would hire any of their opponents if they won. She replied that she would hire one of her opponents as a cook. It wasn’t witty; it was plain rude, but treated as wit. Imagine if Obama offered to hire McCain because he worked a mean barbeque. Palin can only get away with this because she is a woman, and probably only because she is an attractive and personable one (circumventing the label of b*tch. I don’t think Clinton or Pelosi could get away with this).
I don’t know how it is possible for the younger generation to be more urban than the older. From the end of WW2 until 2008 (whether this trend will continue post-crash is not yet clear), the clear trend, especially for people with or planning to soon bear children, was to move to the suburbs. Therefore, each generation born in that period would have to be more suburban than the previous ones. I think one could only reach “more urban” by conflating urban with suburban, which is sometimes done (e.g., by speaking of “greater metropolitan areas” that are mostly suburb), but does not match the voting patterns or much of anything else.
otto 11.18.09 at 11:03 pm
Where’s my Irish footie blogging? That’s what I come to CT for.
Martin Bento 11.18.09 at 11:04 pm
Aside from the generational stuff, I do think the article makes a good point about the shrewdness of the “death panels” remark. I’m skeptical that post-modern theory will tell us much useful about this, but am willing to listen. What Palin did, though, was counter analysis with narrative: she set a scene and populated it with characters, herself and her family. The fact that the premise was false was actually irrelevant to the technique. Also, by personalizing she fed into the daytime TV “everything is personal, and everything personal should be public” aspect of our culture. I knew evil would be coming of that.
Alex 11.19.09 at 12:32 am
Well, most postmodernism is “fashionable nonsense”, and I guess that sums up Palin too.
Anderson 11.19.09 at 1:47 am
What Barry said.
For more evidence that Palin is a postmodern leftist, see Yglesias (quoting NRO):
“The term I used to describe the panel making these decisions should not be taken literally,†says Palin. The phrase is “a lot like when President Reagan used to refer to the Soviet Union as the ‘evil empire.’ He got his point across. He got people thinking and researching what he was talking about. It was quite effective. Same thing with the ‘death panels.’ I would characterize them like that again, in a heartbeat.â€
Amazing. What would the “Right” do if Obama said this? Palin picks THE most famous Reagan quote about absolute moral values, and spins it as “not literal.” No more Derrida for her!
nona mouse 11.19.09 at 3:38 am
Alex: About the meaning of words, Baudrillard may be off but about the ideological use that can be made of words, he seems pretty on to me.
I guess what I find interesting is Palin’s ability to terrify us. It seems that she either frightens you or you adore her and there isn’t much in between. (Of course, there is also the fury that her unbelievable lies engender, the scorn her ignorance evokes, etc.)
What’s so scary about Sarah Palin? Will she become some kind of potent political force? Or is it that she taps into something disturbing? My gut says that she will not be a significant political figure and that she can’t get elected to national office. Many people in Alaska had already soured on her. She’s not rhetorically sharp enough in a spontaneous setting to be a pundit. She feels like a has-been waiting to happen unless someone smart thinks of some way around her many liabilities.
Am I wrong to think that the scary thing is the vein she taps? Do I oversimplify if I think that they are, almost to a man, angry white people? That’s where the Palin phenomenon makes me laugh: When I think of her as the Malcolm X of angry white people. Their Che. The ‘flag bikini with a gun’ photo is really ‘Che smoking a cigar in the jungle’ photo in a funhouse mirror. (We better make sure she doesn’t get martyred or it will really will be.) But I stop short of being completely amused when I remember that the reaction of a whole bunch of angry rightists has never turned out very well.
nnyhav 11.19.09 at 6:50 am
Sameday’s WSJ has The Persecution of Sarah Palin
alex 11.19.09 at 8:20 am
What’s frightening about her is that she’s an absolutely ruthless political grifter who will clearly say and do pretty much anything to advance her personal ambitions, who also happens to be a deranged end-of-days dominionist. All that, and millions of people take her seriously. Scares the shit out of me.
bad Jim 11.19.09 at 8:51 am
Palin, among others, is outraged by her Newsweek cover, which makes me wonder if she’s even read her own book, much less reviewed her televised performances. She’s the flavor of the week as poster child for right-wing anosognosia, but can she compete with Glen Beck pretending to channel Tom Paine?
A perhaps unintentionally hilarious example of this sort greeted me in yesterday’s Times: “to the delight of her fans and the dismay of her enemies, she’s not going anywhere.”
alex 11.19.09 at 8:59 am
Cool word!
Salient 11.19.09 at 1:35 pm
Am I wrong to think that the scary thing is the vein she taps? Do I oversimplify if I think that they are, almost to a man, angry white people? That’s where the Palin phenomenon makes me laugh: When I think of her as the Malcolm X of angry white people.
This has made my day. As did this catachresis:
She’s the flavor of the week as poster child for
… for ‘scratch and sniff’ enthusiasts?
(…Sorry. I guess only a professional DJ could mix that metaphor. Also: it’s eerie to contemplate how well ‘scratch and sniff’ characterizes Glenn Beck.)
Lee A. Arnold 11.19.09 at 6:16 pm
Sarah Palin quit the governorship because Michael Jackson died and she no longer had a role model for her political career. Think about it, they both wore the same little red military number with the vertical columns of big buttons and the turned-down breastplate. But Palin would have had to continue as governor, in order to be politically viable. You can’t quit the job then go figure out how to do it better, because there is now a further circumstance of tripping over the interstices in your explanations. On the other hand, the example of Glenn Beck shows that an incoherent, rambling emotional approach can attract top ad dollars, at least for a while. But she’s already peered down from the top of the game. So perhaps she is studying Oprah. Perhaps she’ll absorb Oprah’s respect for science? Until then, Palin is not postmodern but a late and anti-scientific Romantic. On the other hand for an example of what America does well, “the power to create fascination as its own reward,” listen to Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (b. 1986) stage name Lady Gaga, whom I could imagine is the best technopop songwriter and singer since Madonna. Proof with the new one — over 10 million hits in the last 24 hours — you don’t have to watch the video, but listen to this technopop:
JM 11.20.09 at 3:52 pm
It’s true that Palin, born ’64, is a member of my generation, Gen X. But I was referring to her shtick, the Reaganite revanche that first grew stale and is now a kind of farce.
As for demographics, people far better with numbers than I have pointed out that even though the US was an urban nation by about 1920, the last election was one of the first where the rural vote was simply drowned. As for suburbs, they are not all created equal, nor do they vote the same. Interior suburbs are completely different from outer suburbs and exurbs, as anyone who’s ever taken a trip on the American interstate system can tell you.
roy belmont 11.20.09 at 9:54 pm
Palin is, and was selected and introduced to the public as, a cathartic toy. The intent was never to elect her but to provide a bewildered and desperate electorate with a clear and unambiguous anti-choice.
Obama was so clearly a high-contrast not-Bush, and Palin so clearly that for HClinton. Even though Obama was ostensibly running against McWhatsit with Biden running against Palin, he was really running against GWBush and the nightmare of the Bush Administration’s years in power, and HClinton’s far more the “face” of current US maneuvering and posturing than Biden is or will be.
That the present administration and especially the actions and speeches of HClinton have continued, amplified, and intricately deepened the policies and attitudes of the Bush whatever-it-was is appallingly obvious, but the release and satisfaction of confronting the so-easily defeated and ridiculed Palin is an understandable temptation. To avoid the larger more complexly-colored picture and get some whacks at those nut-jobs, hey yah!
Which is pretty much us doing what we’re supposed to do. Or most of us anyway.
alex 11.21.09 at 9:51 am
Ah, it’s a conspiracy. Of course.
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