Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: Scholars of American politics generally assume that the American state derives its legitimacy from the institutional structure and electoral process created by the Constitution. Underlying this common presupposition is a theory of legitimation, which assumes legitimacy to be an impartial designation, one derived from methodical measures of power relations in political orders. This wisdom, however common, harbors dangerous misunderstandings of how legitimacy operates in contemporary American political life. Its assumptions about neutrality, objective judgment, and the innate validity of certain criteria ignore the normalizing operations of power that currently function to secure state legitimacy. This paper argues that a melodramatic form of political discourse helps to facilitate the conditions in which legitimacy for expansive state action is generated. Melodramatic discourse constructs America as a good, virtuous nation that has been victimized by an evil enemy, and is mandated to enact heroic retribution on the forces that caused its injury. Using discourse analysis of speeches given after 9/11 , I argue that through melodramatic political discourse, the exercise of political power by the state is simultaneously cultivated, legitimated, and depoliticized.