tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2549088046875609394.post2831091217650223519..comments2023-03-24T16:07:35.617-07:00Comments on Sounding Rhetoric: Thoughts on the Hudson Institute Symposium on Conservative Populism, Vol. 1Paul Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00841372871906932597noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2549088046875609394.post-49565713090363353512010-07-08T13:38:08.902-07:002010-07-08T13:38:08.902-07:00I think your post makes sense. I would phrase my a...I think your post makes sense. I would phrase my agreement with you thusly: the causes and principles of the Tea Party must seem eternal in order to buy off the encounter with what amounts to an "emptiness" at the center of politics: that in a postmodern epoch of no guarantees, the coherence of the political cannot be secured by external political reference but rather through repeated performative iterations that insist on a coherence that is belied by the fragmented and fractured notion of a postmodern political life.Paul Johnsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00841372871906932597noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2549088046875609394.post-5819231799752530102010-07-08T11:32:47.205-07:002010-07-08T11:32:47.205-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Torbjornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06913815194036482785noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2549088046875609394.post-12524876671347815522010-07-08T11:32:47.204-07:002010-07-08T11:32:47.204-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Torbjornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06913815194036482785noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2549088046875609394.post-31858595464967261302010-07-08T11:32:08.592-07:002010-07-08T11:32:08.592-07:00I'm not putting this well, so here's a quo...I'm not putting this well, so here's a quotation: "In States of Injury, Wendy Brown refers to the same logic of the dialectical process when she emphasizes how the first reaction of the oppressed to their oppression is that they imagine a world simply deprived of the Other that exerts oppression on them - women imagine a world without men; African Americans a world without whites; workers a world without capitalists... The mistake of such an attitude is not that it is too radical, that it wants to annihilate the Other instead of merely changing it; but, on the contrary, that it is not radical enough: it fails to examine the way the identity of its own position (that of a worker, a woman, an African American) is 'mediated' by the Other (there is no worker without a capitalist organizing the production process, etc.), so that if one is to get rid of the oppressive Other, one has substantially to transform the content of one's own position."<br /><br />If the position of the 'self' is these new populist movements, juxtaposed against an 'Other' characterized by a structure of desire where government responds to the felt needs of the people, then these new Populist movements simply appropriate the Other's desire as the foundational structure which requires negation. What it fails to realize in its antipopulism is that it becomes a perfection of populism, and sets out to supercede the existing logic by supplanting it with a hyperbolized version of itself. <br /><br />Let me go to something you paraphrase from Goldberg that seems strange to me: "what these new populists are arguing for is merely a return to the old state of affairs rather than a radical change from some long established understanding." This is a fiction. The narrative of a conservative past is being used as a rhetorical topos to justify the way that a conservative future might be built. I think that the rhetorical construction of a conservative monopoly on the past is worth pursuing because it is the warrant for the tea party movement's conservative adherance. However, what is important (to me at least) in constructing criticism in response to this rhetoric is to be attentive to that last part of Goldberg's statement: "the proper oriented role" of government. The rhetorical framing of a 'return' is a red herring; it masks the impossibility of a return. For these movements, the past can only ever be a rhetorical resource, a selective topos for a future iteration which has never been. This 'anti-populist populism' hearkens back selectively to values framed as eternal to secure a more replete vision of the future.<br /><br />I hope some of this makes sense.<br /><br />AHTorbjornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06913815194036482785noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2549088046875609394.post-47680080844480594092010-07-08T11:31:50.691-07:002010-07-08T11:31:50.691-07:00Unfortunately, Zizek seems to be of use when talki...Unfortunately, Zizek seems to be of use when talking about the structure of the Tea Party's logic: what he talks about as a Hegelian 'negation of the negation,' (or what I'm a little more comfortable calling a recursive logic, a folding of desire back on itself). Let me recap on what it is that I hear Goldberg saying when he calls contemporary populism 'anti-populist': Contemporary populism is anti-populist because it is not about the immediate needs of the people that require satisfaction, or the particularity of a felt need which must be met. On the contrary, the felt need requiring immediate satisfaction is for the government to maintain a distance from the peoples' needs - to "stop trying to satisfy their immediate passionate desires and instead go back into the proper oriented role." This sounds like a double negation: desire folds back on itself, taking account of the undesirability of the satisfaction of individuated desire. Alternatively, the 'felt need' is the elimination of the attentiveness to 'felt needs'.<br /><br />The way that Zizek puts it, the Hegelian dialectic operates through the radicalization of an initial position - itself a product of a previous dialectic. These new populist movements are not 'anti-populist,' they are a radicalization of the normalized history of populist movements. What is new about them is their taking aim at what is being framed as an antiquated structure of populist desire. The fact that [the demand for governmental response to felt needs] is being 'negated' does not undo the fact that felt needs exist. Populism still operates by virtue of the desire of a particular group. However, this new desire, the new felt need is the undoing of a squo wherein the government responds to the particularity of citizens' felt needs.Torbjornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06913815194036482785noreply@blogger.com