Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper argues that today's democratic society is marked by a post-totalitarian ideology, according to which any radical political project of emancipatory character can culminate only in some form of totalitarian control and domination. This is tantamount to blackmail insofar as it holds that even if the ideals or goals of radical egalitarian projects are just, attempts to realize these will only result in misery, suffering and terror on a mass scale. This blackmail banishes the hope for a greater good by foreclosing the possibility of radical politics from the beginning. To illustrate the ideological hold of this blackmail, I revisit George Orwell's uncompromising vision ot totalitarianism as offered in his novel 1984. However, instead of reading the novel as a depiction of a world of complete control and domination, I read it as a depiction of the inner desire for the control and domination offered by totalitarianism. Psychologically, at least, the totalitarian conditions that Orwell's protagonist finds himself in are not as far removed from those inhabited by today's post-totalitarian subject as we might think. It is in the paranoid motives of Orwell's protagonist that we can discover the inner motives that make us susceptible to today's blackmail of totalitarianism.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In the course of the twenty years between 1984 and 2004, both the U.S. and France have been the targets terrorist plots by Islamic extremist plots on two separate occasions. This study examines the impact of these attacks on national security discourse within the media. These are major events, threatening not just buildings or individuals, but nations (Calhoun et al. 2002). Examining the impact of terrorism on media discourse is useful in teasing out the complexities of discursive opportunities across countries. This also provides an ideal situation to compare the national processes with expectations of globalization in reactions to terrorism. This paper seeks to extend recent cross-national research by showing how national context, domain and critical moments can shift discursive opportunities, therefore leading to the prominence of new frames. When the discursive opportunity structure changes, new frames can gain prominence which can influence how the problem is understood or how the problem will be proposed to be solved. Results of this study suggest that national security discourse varies across time and is impacted both by national repertoires and global processes. The results also suggest that responses to all events are not equal, with all events being qualitatively different and therefore prompting a different discursive response.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The growth and youth of the U.S. Latino population at the close of the twentieth century makes them a desired constituency for both major political parties. Intriguingly, the party organization which has long resisted the recognition of internal voting blocs—the GOP——has allocated unprecedented resources between 1980 and 2000 to inspire identification from Latinos. This study investigates the nature of these invitations. Specifically, it reveals how a party, whose organizational identity opposes acknowledging individuals as ethnic group members, appeals to an ethnic group. By examining (1) English and Spanish language television advertisements and (2) elite interview data with Republican Latino strategists, we argue that these ads depict satisfied Latino citizens, emphasize Latino family connections, and eschew traditional political issues. These identification strategies are notable for they may have considerable effects on the American polity at the dawn of, and well into, the twenty-first century.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Media scholars like Newcomb, Silverstone and Fiske & Hartely have employed culturally-based theoretical perspectives to assess television’s function in society at large. Borrowing from anthropological, historical, and literary sources, this critical research has explored television’s contemporary narrative traditions as "ways of knowing" and “forms of public thought” that systematically distort and magnify aspects of the commonsense world. In proposing a critical vocabulary more attuned to the nature of mass mediated texts, Cawelti (1976) calls for a canon more sensitive to persistent themes, serial narration, celebrity performance and enduring influence in “the best” popular products. Presumably, informed by such a canon, critics can 1) identify features of "popular" texts that gain purchase in the marketplace 2) assess the influence these texts have on other popular texts and 3) describe how these texts are assimilated into ongoing cultural practices. This critical analysis examines the introductory monologues of NBC's long-running The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (270 monologues have been logged) to assess the use of comic commentary and social-typing (Celebrity-Signifiers) in scanning and interpreting the shifting norms and values in contemporary American experience. The reach and function of this unique collective discourse is arguably one of the more significant phenomena in American popular culture and will be evaluated from an historical and theoretical perspective.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Many students of terrorism invoke psychological factors to explain decisions to use violence against civilians. But labeling political violence against civilians terrorism and relegating its causes to psychological considerations do little by way of prescriptive analysis. This type of analysis only comforts the commonsense perception that terrorists are irrational beings and that, consequently, dialogue with such groups is useless. This paper questions such received wisdom. Drawing from the experience of Hizballah, a Lebanese Shiite political militia-turned party, I argue that the resort to violence against civilians, far from being an irrational impulse, is a carefully calibrated strategy. The argument proceeds in two steps. First, I establish that several factors can be invoked to draw a typology of relations between Hizballah and various segments of the Lebanese and Israeli populations. Second, I demonstrate the linkage between differing types of relations and specific strategies used by Hizballah in its dealings with the various target populations. Though primarily a case-study, the paper has broader implications as will be demonstrated throughout by drawing analogies to the strategies of other groups involved in terrorist violence against civilians.