The Socio-Imaging of Politics (Leaders: Bruce E. Gronbeck and James P. McDaniel)

Political acts not only create policy but also polity: they get things done in society and simultaneously assert a political identity for citizens of that society. Political images, as well, are both messages arraying political symbols and also frames or fields that position their citizen-viewers within specifiable subject positions, i.e., identities. Political images are constructed so as to be viewed and yet to have that viewing done from some “where” by some “one.” This seminar explores these dual rhetorical processes, theoretically and practically.

The following reading list offers some classic and some new works drawn from multiple intellectual traditions: cultural-anthropological history and theory, rhetorical-cultural studies, the political-symbolist school, semiotics, Lacanian psychoanalytic work, French postmodernism, and enactment theory in a couple of forms. Both the pictorial and the performative understanding of socio-imaging are reflected here. We’ve held this to ten items in recognition of the authorities setting up these seminars.

Bibliography

Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. 1967; trans., rpt. Detroit: Black & White, 1983. Chap. 1 (articles 1-34).

Deibert, Ronald J. Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia: Communication in World Order Transformation. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Chap. 1.

Deluca, Kevin. “Unruly Arguments: The Body Rhetoric of Earth First!, Act Up, and Queer Nation.” Argumentation & Advocacy 36 (1999): 9-22.

Edelman, Murray. Constructing the Political Spectacle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Chaps. 1 and 7 frame it.

Geertz, Clifford. “Charisma.” In Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual & Politics Since the Mddle Ages, ed. Sean Wilentz. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985.

Hall, Stuart, ed. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage/The Open University, 1997. Chap. 1.

Kinser, Bill, and Neil Kleinman. The Dream That Was No More A Dream: A Seaerch for Aesthetic Reality in Germany, 1890-1945. New York: Harper & Row, 1969. [good luck finding this; it will be brought if possible]

McDaniel, James P. “Fantasm: The Triumph of Form (An Essay on the Democratic Sublime).” Quarterly Journal of Speech 86 (2000): 48-66.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16 (1975): 6-18.

Norton, Anne. Republic of Signs: Liberal Theory and American Popular Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Chap. 6.

Participants