DOCSLIB.ORG

PERFORMING 'DUBYA': GEORGE W. BUSH NARRATIVES on the POLITICAL and THEATRICAL STAGES by Ryan Patrick Howe BA Theatre Arts A

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
PERFORMING 'DUBYA': GEORGE W. BUSH NARRATIVES on the POLITICAL and THEATRICAL STAGES by Ryan Patrick Howe BA Theatre Arts A PERFORMING ‘DUBYA’: GEORGE W. BUSH NARRATIVES ON THE POLITICAL AND THEATRICAL STAGES by Ryan Patrick Howe BA Theatre Arts and Political Science, Boston College, 1998 MA Drama, Washington University in St. Louis, 2004 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2013 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH THE DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Ryan Patrick Howe It was defended on March 20th, 2013 and approved by Dr. Bruce A. McConachie, Professor, Department of Theatre Arts Dr. Kathleen George, Professor, Department of Theatre Arts Dr. Susan Harris Smith, Professor, Department of English Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Attilio Favorini, Professor, Department of Theatre Arts ii Copyright © by Ryan Patrick Howe 2013 iii PERFORMING ‘DUBYA’: GEORGE W. BUSH NARRATIVES ON THE POLITICAL AND THEATRICAL STAGES Ryan Patrick Howe, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2013 This dissertation examines how theatrical performance might offer the political left a model for responding to the communication strategies of the political right through a case study of responses to the George W. Bush administration. I conduct this exploration through a two-part study. In the first part, I establish a theoretical framework by looking to the work of Francis Fukuyama, Bruce McConachie, Brian Boyd and others to identify the common evolutionary and cognitive roots of storytelling and political order. Based on that understanding, I examine the historical development of presidential storytelling and create a rubric for analyzing contemporary presidential performance. The second part of this dissertation is comprised of three chapters, each of which focuses on a particular narrative strategy used by the George W. Bush administration to engender public support for the president and administration policies. I introduce and examine three narrative frameworks: the dynasty narrative, the redemption narrative, and the rescue narrative. In each chapter, I conduct a focused examination of the narrative strategy and how the president performed it. I then identify ways in which the theatrical performances in the case study expose, reject or replace the narratives crafted by Bush’s presidential performance. I conclude each chapter by comparing the theatrical responses to those provided by late night television performances of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE………………………………………………………………………..……………..…...vii 1.0 INTRODUCTION: PRESIDENTIAL STORYTELLING…………………………….……1 1.1 EVOLUTION, POLITICAL ORDER, AND STORYTELLING………………..…6 1.2 ORIGINS OF THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY AND EARLY PRESIDENTIAL STORYTELLING…………………………………..………….19 1.3 FACTORS SHAPING CONTEMPORARY PRESIDENTIAL STORYTELLING………………………………………………..………………..30 1.3.1 Rapidly Changing Communication Media…………….…………………31 1.3.2 The Expanding Authority of the Executive Branch……….……………..39 1.3.3 Deficient Storytelling by American Progressives…………..…………….44 2.0 CONTEMPORARY PRESIDENTIAL PERFORMANCE…………………….…………..49 2.1 THE PRECEDENTIAL PERFORMANCE OF RONALD REAGAN..……….....51 2.2 PERFORMANCE, COGNITION, AND CLASSIFYING CONTEMPORARY PRESIDENTIAL PERFORMANCE……..…………………64 2.2.1 Presidential Ritual………………………………………….………….….69 2.2.2 Presidential Character: Repeated Patterns of Behavior………………….73 2.2.3 Narration of Presidential Action………………………………..………...76 3.0 THE BUSH DYNASTY NARRATIVE ……………….…………………………………..82 3.1 GEORGE W. BUSH’S PERFORMANCE OF THE DYNASTY NARRATIVE…………………………………………………………93 3.2 RESPONSES TO THE DYNASTY NARRATIVE…………………………….…99 3.2.1 You’re Welcome, America: A Final Night with George W. Bush..............101 3.2.2 The Passion of George W. Bush……………………………………….……….106 3.2.3 When We Go Upon the Sea…………………………………………………..…110 3.2.4 The Daily Show and The Colbert Report …………….…………………….…116 4.0 THE BUSH REDEMPTION NARRATIVE………….…………………………………….128 4.1 GEORGE W. BUSH AND THE PAULINE REDEMPTION NARRATIVE………………………………………..131 4.2 GEORGE W. BUSH’S PERFORMANCE OF THE REDEMPTION NARRATIVE……………………………………………………136 4.2.1 Transgression Phase……………………………………………….………136 4.2.2 Transformation Phase……………………………………….………….…138 4.2.3 Commissioning Phase………………………………….………………….139 v 4.3 RESPONSES TO THE REDEMPTION NARRATIVE…………..……………….140 4.3.1 The Passion of George W. Bush ….……………………………………………144 4.3.2 When We Go Upon the Sea……………………………………..……….………148 4.3.3 You’re Welcome, America: A Final Night with George W. Bush …………152 4.3.4 The Daily Show and The Colbert Report ……………………………………..155 5.0 THE BUSH RESCUE NARRATIVE……………..…………………………………...........161 5.1 GEORGE W. BUSH’S PERFORMANCE OF THE RESCUE NARRATIVE………………………………………….…………………167 5.2 RESPONSES TO THE RESCUE NARRATIVE………………………….………..174 5.2.1 Stuff Happens………………………………………………………………………177 5.2.2 You’re Welcome, America: A Final Night with George W. Bush…………..182 5.2.3 When We Go Upon the Sea………………………………………….…………..187 5.2.4 The Daily Show and The Colbert Report ……………………………….……..190 5.3 CONCLUSIONS……………………………………………………………………197 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………….…………………………...…202 vi PREFACE I owe considerable gratitude to those who have helped me with this project. First, I would like to thank Buck Favorini for his careful guidance, intellectual example, and persistent encouragement. I also appreciate and acknowledge the robust contributions of the other members of my dissertation committee: Bruce McConachie, Kathleen George, and Susan Harris Smith. I am grateful to Lee Blessing and Adam Mathias for graciously allowing me access to their unpublished, thought-provoking plays. I also want to thank the University of Pittsburgh for the resources provided me over years of study. In particular, I am appreciative of the community maintained by the faculty, staff, and students in the Theatre Arts Department. I found it to be a place for vigorous intellectual and artistic exploration. Among my many colleagues and friends there, I would like to offer particular thanks to my constant companions Chip Crane and Melissa Porterfield and the valuable mentorship of past professors Melanie Dreyer-Lude and Lynne Conner. Likewise, many teachers and academic mentors have provided inspiration and example throughout my academic pursuits. Among many others, I owe particular debts to Scott Cummings at Boston College and Julie Jordan at Washington University in St. Louis. I owe additional thanks to a great wealth of giving friends, family, and colleagues. To all my friends in Baltimore, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and elsewhere: your good humor and faith have driven me to persevere. I thank my colleagues in Woodlawn, especially vii Chris Smith Ritter, for the encouragement, understanding, and advice. I thank my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and in-laws for years of delicate inquiries and encouraging words. I am especially grateful, of course, to my parents. Their steadfast support of their children and grandchildren is inspirational. I owe any academic, professional, and personal successes to their investments, sacrifices, and love. Likewise, my brother and sister have offered constant and crucial support. I am particularly grateful to Rory for having that little room for me in Fell’s Point. Most importantly, Sara, thank you for everything, but especially for finding me at just the right time. viii 1.0 INTRODUCTION: PRESIDENTIAL STORYTELLING In The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics (2009), George Lakoff argues that American political discourse has been recently dominated by radical conservatives who better understand how to exploit the structures of the human brain than their political opponents. Lakoff voices concern that political operatives and politicians, particularly on the political right, appeal to the subconscious level of the American voter in order to promote a particular political agenda and its associated politicians (10). The right’s use of simple and recognizable narratives to engage with voters unconsciously typifies that understanding and allows them to win elections and frame debates. He suggests that the left’s inability to counter these strategies successfully comes from the progressive tendency to privilege tactics rooted in rational persuasion over unconscious cognitive processing in vying for votes. Lakoff, and other scholars such as the similarly-minded Drew Westen, call on the political left to shape counter strategies rooted in the understanding that the mechanisms through which the human brain understands reality are largely unconscious. For Lakoff, the electoral successes of George W. Bush exemplify the right’s superior approach. Of course, it is not surprising that the American presidency might serve as an obvious location for testing the validity of these concerns. Successful storytelling and mythmaking are critical to the maintenance of political power. Historian Evan Cornog addresses the long history of the crafting of presidential stories in his book The Power and the Story (2004). He surveys stories throughout American history that have helped elect presidents, support and oppose presidential actions, and reflect on presidential administrations in retrospect. As his study 1 suggests, these narratives can be large or small, complicated or simplistic, rooted in fact or completely fictional, but they have long been critical in attaining and maintaining presidential authority. In contemporary America, presidential stories are told in a particular brand of performance promulgated
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 2021 Event Author Line-Up
    2021 Event Author Line-Up Peter Baker and Susan Glasser Peter Baker and Susan Glasser are longtime Washington journalists who have written for years about the intersection of politics and the world. They are co-authors of Kremlin Rising, and most recently New York Times bestseller and award-winning book The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III. Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times and an MSNBC political analyst. He has covered the last five presidents for The Times and The Washington Post and is the author or co-author of six books. Glasser is a staff writer for The New Yorker and author of the weekly “Letter from Biden’s Washington” as well as a global affairs analyst for CNN. She previously was the editor of POLITICO, founder of POLITICO Magazine, and editor-in- chief of Foreign Policy magazine following a long stint at The Post. Baker and Glasser live in Washington with their son and are currently at work on a book on the Trump presidency. George W. Bush George W. Bush served as the forty-third President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. He had previously served as Governor of Texas. He and his wife, Laura, live in Dallas, where they founded the George W. Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University. President Bush is the author of three #1 bestsellers: Decision Points, his presidential memoir; 41, a biography of his father, President George H. W. Bush; and Portraits of Courage, a collection of oil paintings and stories honoring the sacrifice of America’s military veterans.
    [Show full text]
  • George HW Bush and CHIREP at the UN 1970-1971
    University of New Orleans ScholarWorks@UNO University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations Dissertations and Theses Spring 5-22-2020 The First Cut is the Deepest: George H.W. Bush and CHIREP at the U.N. 1970-1971 James W. Weber Jr. University of New Orleans, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td Part of the American Popular Culture Commons, Asian History Commons, Cultural History Commons, Diplomatic History Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Weber, James W. Jr., "The First Cut is the Deepest: George H.W. Bush and CHIREP at the U.N. 1970-1971" (2020). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 2756. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2756 This Thesis is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by ScholarWorks@UNO with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. This Thesis has been accepted for inclusion in University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UNO. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The First Cut is the Deepest : George H.W. Bush and CHIREP at the U.N. 1970–1971 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of New Orleans in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History by James W.
    [Show full text]
  • If It's Broke, Fix It: Restoring Federal Government Ethics and Rule Of
    If it’s Broke, Fix it Restoring Federal Government Ethics and Rule of Law Edited by Norman Eisen The editor and authors of this report are deeply grateful to several indi- viduals who were indispensable in its research and production. Colby Galliher is a Project and Research Assistant in the Governance Studies program of the Brookings Institution. Maya Gros and Kate Tandberg both worked as Interns in the Governance Studies program at Brookings. All three of them conducted essential fact-checking and proofreading of the text, standardized the citations, and managed the report’s production by coordinating with the authors and editor. IF IT’S BROKE, FIX IT 1 Table of Contents Editor’s Note: A New Day Dawns ................................................................................. 3 By Norman Eisen Introduction ........................................................................................................ 7 President Trump’s Profiteering .................................................................................. 10 By Virginia Canter Conflicts of Interest ............................................................................................... 12 By Walter Shaub Mandatory Divestitures ...................................................................................... 12 Blind-Managed Accounts .................................................................................... 12 Notification of Divestitures .................................................................................. 13 Discretionary Trusts
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction Ronald Reagan’S Defining Vision for the 1980S— - and America
    © Copyright, Princeton University Press. No part of this book may be distributed, posted, or reproduced in any form by digital or mechanical means without prior written permission of the publisher. Introduction Ronald Reagan’s Defining Vision for the 1980s— -_and America There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right. ronald reagan, “the speech,” 1964 Your first point, however, about making them love you, not just believe you, believe me—I agree with that. ronald reagan, october 16, 1979 One day in 1924, a thirteen-year-old boy joined his parents and older brother for a leisurely Sunday drive roaming the lush Illinois country- side. Trying on eyeglasses his mother had misplaced in the backseat, he discovered that he had lived life thus far in a “haze” filled with “colored blobs that became distinct” when he approached them. Recalling the “miracle” of corrected vision, he would write: “I suddenly saw a glori- ous, sharply outlined world jump into focus and shouted with delight.” Six decades later, as president of the United States of America, that extremely nearsighted boy had become a contact lens–wearing, fa- mously farsighted leader. On June 12, 1987, standing 4,476 miles away from his boyhood hometown of Dixon, Illinois, speaking to the world from the Berlin Wall’s Brandenburg Gate, Ronald Wilson Reagan em- braced the “one great and inescapable conclusion” that seemed to emerge after forty years of Communist domination of Eastern Eu- rope. “Freedom leads to prosperity,” Reagan declared in his signature For general queries, contact [email protected] © Copyright, Princeton University Press.
    [Show full text]
  • Reagan's Victory
    Reagan’s ictory How HeV Built His Winning Coalition By Robert G. Morrison Foreword by William J. Bennett Reagan’s Victory: How He Built His Winning Coalition By Robert G. Morrison 1 FOREWORD By William J. Bennett Ronald Reagan always called me on my birthday. Even after he had left the White House, he continued to call me on my birthday. He called all his Cabinet members and close asso- ciates on their birthdays. I’ve never known another man in public life who did that. I could tell that Alzheimer’s had laid its firm grip on his mind when those calls stopped coming. The President would have agreed with the sign borne by hundreds of pro-life marchers each January 22nd: “Doesn’t Everyone Deserve a Birth Day?” Reagan’s pro-life convic- tions were an integral part of who he was. All of us who served him knew that. Many of my colleagues in the Reagan administration were pro-choice. Reagan never treat- ed any of his team with less than full respect and full loyalty for that. But as for the Reagan administration, it was a pro-life administration. I was the second choice of Reagan’s to head the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). It was my first appointment in a Republican administration. I was a Democrat. Reagan had chosen me after a well-known Southern historian and literary critic hurt his candidacy by criticizing Abraham Lincoln. My appointment became controversial within the Reagan ranks because the Gipper was highly popular in the South, where residual animosities toward Lincoln could still be found.
    [Show full text]
  • George W Bush Childhood Home Reconnaissance Survey.Pdf
    Intermountain Region National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior August 2015 GEORGE W. BUSH CHILDHOOD HOME Reconnaissance Survey Midland, Texas Front cover: President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush speak to the media after touring the President’s childhood home at 1421 West Ohio Avenue, Midland, Texas, on October 4, 2008. President Bush traveled to attend a Republican fundraiser in the town where he grew up. Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images CONTENTS BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE — i SUMMARY OF FINDINGS — iii RECONNAISSANCE SURVEY PROCESS — v NPS CRITERIA FOR EVALUATION OF NATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE — vii National Historic Landmark Criterion 2 – viii NPS Theme Studies on Presidential Sites – ix GEORGE W. BUSH: A CHILDHOOD IN MIDLAND — 1 SUITABILITY — 17 Childhood Homes of George W. Bush – 18 Adult Homes of George W. Bush – 24 Preliminary Determination of Suitability – 27 HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION OF THE GEORGE W. BUSH CHILDHOOD HOME, MIDLAND TEXAS — 29 Architectural Description – 29 Building History – 33 FEASABILITY AND NEED FOR NPS MANAGEMENT — 35 Preliminary Determination of Feasability – 37 Preliminary Determination of Need for NPS Management – 37 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS — 39 APPENDIX: THE 41ST AND 43RD PRESIDENTS AND FIRST LADIES OF THE UNITED STATES — 43 George H.W. Bush – 43 Barbara Pierce Bush – 44 George W. Bush – 45 Laura Welch Bush – 47 BIBLIOGRAPHY — 49 SURVEY TEAM MEMBERS — 51 George W. Bush Childhood Home Reconnaissance Survey George W. Bush’s childhood bedroom at the George W. Bush Childhood Home museum at 1421 West Ohio Avenue, Midland, Texas, 2012. The knotty-pine-paneled bedroom has been restored to appear as it did during the time that the Bush family lived in the home, from 1951 to 1955.
    [Show full text]
  • Sean Fraga, Ph.D. Curriculum Vitae April 2020
    Sean Fraga, Ph.D. Curriculum vitae April 2020 209 New South 237 Sullivan Place, Apt. D2 Princeton University Brooklyn, N.Y. 11225 Princeton, N.J. 08544 1-206-295-0823 [email protected] seanfraga.com EDUCATION Degrees Ph.D., History, Princeton University, January 2019. Advisor: Marni Sandweiss. M.A., History, Princeton University, May 2015. B.A., American Studies (intensive), with distinction in the major, Yale University, 2010. Advisor: Jean-Christophe Agnew. Certifications Teaching Transcript, McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, Princeton Univ., 2019. PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Humanities in a Digital World Program, University of Southern California. Fall 2020 to Spring 2021. Lecturer, Princeton Writing Program, Princeton University. Fall 2019 to Spring 2020. Postgraduate Research Associate, Department of History and Center for Digital Humanities, Princeton University. Spring/Summer 2019. PUBLICATIONS Books Ocean Fever: Steam, Trade, and the American Creation of the Terraqueous Pacific Northwest. Under contract, Yale University Press (Lamar Series in Western History). Journal articles 2020 ”’An Outlet to the Western Sea’: Puget Sound, Terraqueous Mobility, and Northern Pacific Railroad’s Pursuit of Trade with Asia, 1864–1892,” Western Historical Quarterly, forthcoming (Winter 2020). 2014 ”Native Americans, Military Science, and Settler Colonialism on the Pacific Railroad Surveys, 1853–1855,” Princeton University Library Chronicle, vol. 75, no. 3 (Spring 2014): 317–349. Received the Friends of the Princeton University Library Prize for Outstanding Scholarship by a Graduate Student. Journal articles under revision 2020 ”They Came on Waves of Ink: Digitally Mapping Pacific Northwest Maritime [email protected] Page 1 of 9 Trade Networks at the Dawn of American Settlement, 1851–61.” For resubmission to Current Research in Digital History.
    [Show full text]
  • Reagan's Mythical America
    Reagan’s Mythical America This page intentionally left blank Reagan’s Mythical America Storytelling as Political Leadership Jan Hanska REAGAN’ S MYTHICAL AMERICA Copyright © Jan Hanska, 2012. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-1-137-27299-7 All rights reserved. First published in 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-44509-7 ISBN 978-1-137-27300-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137273000 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hanska, Jan. Reagan’s mythical America : storytelling as political leadership / by Jan Hanska. p. cm. 1. Reagan, Ronald—Oratory. 2. Political oratory—United States— History—20th century. 3. Discourse analysis, Narrative—Political aspects—United States. 4. Communication in politics— United States—History—20th century. 5. United States—Politics and government—1981–1989. I. Title. E877.2.H356 2012 973.927092—dc23 2012013075 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: October 2012 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne This book is dedicated to professors Vilho Harle Ira Chernus Mika Luoma-aho .
    [Show full text]
  • Pitchfork Politics Elections
    failed to gain traction in national THE AME Pitchfork Politics elections. On the left, the countercultural protest movements of the 1960s and The Populist Threat to 1970s challenged the status quo but didn’t secure institutional representa- R I Liberal Democracy tion until their radicalism had subsided. C As the political scientists Seymour AN DISTEMPER Yascha Mounk Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan famously observed, during the postwar years, the party structures of North America and ince Roman times, virtually every western Europe were “frozen” to an type of government that holds unprecedented degree. Between 1960 Scompetitive elections has experi- and 1990, the parties represented in the enced some form of populism—some parliaments of Amsterdam, Copenhagen, attempt by ambitious politicians to Ottawa, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna, mobilize the masses in opposition to an and Washington barely changed. For a establishment they depict as corrupt or few decades, Western political establish- self-serving. From Tiberius Gracchus and ments held such a firm grip on power the populares of the Roman Senate, to the that most observers stopped noticing champions of the popolo in Machiavelli’s just how remarkable that stability was sixteenth-century Florence, to the Jacobins compared to the historical norm. in Paris in the late eighteenth century, Yet beginning in the 1990s, a new to the Jacksonian Democrats who stormed crop of populists began a steady rise. nineteenth-century Washington—all Over the past two decades, populist based their attempts at mass mobilization movements in Europe and the United on appeals to the simplicity and goodness States have uprooted traditional party of ordinary people.
    [Show full text]
  • A Critical Review of Recent Literature on Populism
    Politics and Governance (ISSN: 2183–2463) 2017, Volume 5, Issue 4, Pages 177–186 DOI: 10.17645/pag.v5i4.1146 Review A Critical Review of Recent Literature on Populism John Abromeit Department of History, State University of New York, Buffalo State, Buffalo, NY 14216, USA; E-Mail: [email protected] Submitted: 19 August 2017 | Accepted: 18 September 2017 | Published: 29 December 2017 Abstract This is a review article of the following five recent studies on populism: 1) Ruth Wodak’s The Politics of Fear: What Right- Wing Populist Discourses Mean (Sage, 2015); 2) Benjamin Moffitt’s The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style and Representation (Stanford University Press, 2016); 3) Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser’s Populism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017); 4) Jan-Werner Müller’s What is Populism? (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); and 5) John B. Judis’ The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics (Columbia Global Reports, 2016). The review argues for a return to early Frankfurt School Critical Theory to address some of the shortcomings of these studies. Keywords authoritarianism; Frankfurt School; left-wing populism; populism; right-wing populism Issue This review is part of the issue “Populism and the Remaking of (Il)Liberal Democracy in Europe”, edited by Lars Rensmann (University of Groningen, The Netherlands), Sarah de Lange (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) and Stefan Coupe- rus (University of Groningen, The Netherlands). © 2017 by the author; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribu- tion 4.0 International License (CC BY).
    [Show full text]
  • Ridley Scott's Dystopia Meets Ronald Reagan's America
    RIDLEY SCOTT’S DYSTOPIA MEETS RONALD REAGAN’S AMERICA: CLASS CONFLICT AND POLITICAL DISCLOSURE IN BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT Fabián Orán Llarena Universidad de La Laguna “The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great own- ers was directed at repression.” (John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath) Abstract Blade Runner has been the object of multiple inquiries over the last three decades. However, this essay analyzes the socio-political discourse of the text, one aspect yet to be elucidated. Taking as basis the 1992 re-edited version (Blade Runner: The Final Cut), the essay studies the film as a critical and contextualized response to Ronald Reagan’s presidency (1981-1989). The essay scrutinizes how the materiality of the socio-economic system presented in the film, and the discourses that revolve around it, embody a critical representation of the policy-making and cultural discourse of Reaganism. Thus, the ensuing text characterizes the film as a (counter) 155 narrative that deconstructs the conservative ideology of the 1980s. Keywords: Reaganism, supply-side theory, hegemony, underclass, Off World. Resumen Blade Runner ha sido objeto de múltiples consideraciones durante las últimas tres décadas. No obstante, este ensayo analiza el discurso político-cultural del film, un aspecto aún por dilucidar. Tomando como base el remontaje de 1992 (Blade Runner: The Final Cut), se estudia el film como una respuesta crítica y contextualizada a la presidencia de Ronald Reagan (1981-1989). El ensayo escruta cómo la materialidad del sistema socio-económico presentado en el film, y los discursos que se construyen en torno al mismo, son una representación crítica de las políticas y el discurso cultural del Reaganismo.
    [Show full text]
  • Books 2018-2019
    Society of Early Americanists Recent Publications on Early American Topics Archives Publications 2018-2019 The Society of Early Americanists Recent Publications on Early American Topics page contains a list of books relevant to the field of Early American Studies. Listed below are Publications Spring 2018-Summer 2019 in alphabetical order by Publisher. Spring and Summer 2019 Bucknell University Press • Cara Anne Kinnally, Forgotten Futures, Colonized Pasts: Transnational Collaboration in Nineteenth-Century Greater Mexico Cambridge University Press • Caree A. Banton, More Auspicious Shores: Barbadian Migration to Liberia, Blackness, and the Making of an African Republic • Gerald Leonard and Saul Cornell, The Partisan Republic: Democracy, Exclusion, and the Fall of the Founders’ Constitution, 1780s–1830s • Jessica K. Lowe, Murder in the Shenandoah: Making Law Sovereign in Revolutionary Virginia • Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Thomas Jefferson: A Modern Prometheus • Christoph Rosenmüller, Corruption and Justice in Colonial Mexico, 1650–1755 Cornell University Press • John Gilbert McCurdy, Quarters: The Accommodation of the British Army and the Coming of the American Revolution • H. Daniel Peck, Thomas Cole’s Refrain: The Paintings of Catskill Creek Duke University Press • Hester Blum, The News at the Ends of the Earth: The Print Culture of Polar Exploration Harvard University Press • Adams Family, Adams Family Correspondence, Volume 14: October 1799 – February 1801, Edited by Hobson Woodward, Sara Martin, Christopher F. Minty, Amanda M. Norton, Neal E. Millikan, Gwen Fries, Sara Georgini • Brett Malcolm Grainger, Church in the Wild: Evangelicals in Antebellum America • Jacob F. Lee, Masters of the Middle Waters: Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions along the Mississippi Indiana University Press • Richard A.
    [Show full text]