Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics

24 Bennett and Shapiro, The Politics of Moralizing, 4·

25 Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad.

26 Al presidential inaugural addresses can be found at http: //w.bartleby.com.

27 This speech is available in Merril and Patterson, eds., Major Problems in Ame1·ican Foreign Relations, vol. 2, 220-22.

28 Ibid., 221.

29 Harry S. Truman, 'M.nual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union, January 8, 1951." Available at http: //www.trumanlibrary.org.

30 This pattern applies even to his famous "military-industrial-complex" speech in which evil does not appear.

34 "Radio and Television Address to the American People on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty;' July 26, 1963. Available at http: //Ww.kennedylibrary.org.

35 '�ddress Before a Joint Session of Congress;' November 27, 1963. Available at http://w.lbjlib.utexas.edu.

as See his � "Commencement Address at Howard University: To Fulfill These Rights;' June 4, 1965. Available at http://w.lbjlib.utexas.edu.

37 Nixon's first inaugural address was delivered on January 20, 1969, and is available at http://w.nixonlibraryfoundation.org. Predictably cynical comments at this point might treat Nixon's appeal to listening in less lofty terms by emphasizing that this was how Nixon could hear the "silent majority" or why he embraced wire-tapping.

39 President Jimmy Carter's "Crisis of Confidence speech was delivered on July 15,

23 3

190

NO TES TO CHAPTER FOUR

1. A transcript is available at http:/ /w.pbs.org/wgbh/ americanexperi ence, accessed November 18, 2008.

See the speeches collected at http:/ /w.reagan.utexas.edu.

Rogin, Ronald Reagan, xv. I should note here that Ragin is discussing a specific speech Reagan gave about Nicaragua. Insofar as Ragin treats this speech as indicative of Reagan's general position as a representative of the .American countersubversive tradition, however, my critical point applies.

42 Ibid., .x:vii.

See, for example, Reagan's "Remarks on Rewarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the Late Senator Henry M. Jackson ofWashington," June 26, 1984. Reagan observes, "Henry Jackson understood that there is great good in the world and great evil, too, that there are saints and sinners among us. He had no illusions about totalitarians, but his understanding of the existence of evil didn't sour or dishearten him. He had a great hope and great faith in America: Available at http:/ /w.reagan.utexas.edu.

Asking whether freedom must "wither in a quiet deadening accommodation with totalitarian evil;' Reagan, in a speech before the British House of a Commons in June 1982, invokes a moral struggle between the forces of good and the forces of evil. The speech was widely criticized for its apocalypticism, primitivism, and its outrageous admixng of religion and politics. Text of the speech is available at http:/ I odur.let.rug.nl/ usa/PI rr4o I speeches I empire.htmj the speech can be heard at http:/ /w.americanrhetoric.com.

In a radio address given during Easter, three years after the "evil empire" speech, Reagan notes that few commentators properly contextualized his point about opposing totalitarian and communist dictators. Reagan explains that he had been talking about America's own spiritual problems and its legacy of evil with respect to racism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of intolerance. See "Radio Address to the Nation on International Violence and Democratic Values;' March 29, 1986� Available at http:/ /w.reagan.utexas.edu.

"Interview with Henry Brandon of the London Sunday Times and News Service on Domestic and Foreign Policy Issues;' March 18, 1983. Available at http:/ I w.reagan.utexas.edu.

"Democracy's Next Battle;' Oxford Union Society Address by Ronald Reagan, December 4, 1992. I was unable to find a copy of this speech online. The Reagan Library, however, kindly faxed me a copy. Their phone number is (Boo) 410- 8354. I'm indebted to Desiree Harvey for her diligence in securing this text. See also "Reagan: �Evil Still Sta1ks the Planet; " Washington Post, December s, 1992, al9.

Ragin describes a number of Reagan's movies and roles, reading them, however, as a confusion between life and film rather than as an aliance between the imaginary and the Real in the wake of the decline of symbolic eficiency.

Fineman, "Bush and God;' 24.

40

41

43

44

45

46

47

191

NOTES TO CHAPTER F O UR

48

49

60 George W. Bush's speech to a joint session of Congress, September 20, 2001, can be heard at http:/ /w.americanrhetoric.com.

e1 "Terror Coverage Boosts News Media's Images;' Pew Research Center for People and the Press, survey report released November 28, 2001. Available at htp: I I people-press.org (accessed July 28, 2oo8).

FXVE Ethics

1 Butler, Giving an Account of Onesel,t 108. Hereafter cited in the text as Giving.

2 See Zizek, "Neighbors an4 Other Monsters;' 137.

3 Foucault, "Governmentality," 102.

4 Butler, Excitable Speech, 78. Hereafter cited in the text as ES.

5 See Passavant, No Escape.

s I should note here that Zizek does not view this closure as final; rather, through., out his work he emphasizes possibilities for rupture, as in, for example, the radical act that changes the coordinates of a situation, in Lacan's feminine formulae for sexuation that present a logic of the non-all, and in the gaps and ruptures inherent in the material structures in which we :find ourselves. In what follows, I draw from Eric Santner's specific figuring of these gaps as stresses that call to and excite the subject.

7 Zizek, The Ticklish Subject, 369.

s Butler, Precarious Life, 20. Hereafter cited in the text as PL. I am not sure how new these bases are. Judith Shklar, for example, theorizes liberalism by prioritizing a fundamental hatred of cruelty. See her Ordinary Vices.

192

NOTES T O C HAPTER FIVE

9 Passavant, "The Strong Neoliberal State:'
:ao Ibid.
1 1 Sassen, Losing Control?
12 Zizek, The Fragile Absolute, 40.
1 3 See Zizek, The Parallax View, 297 .
.14 See Dean, Ziiek's Politics, chapter 4·
15 The Parallax View, 10.
16 Ibid., 370.
1 7 "Neighbors and Other Monsters;' 159-60.
1 s Ibid., 16o.
1 9 SantnerJ "Miracles Happen;' 86-87.
20 Ibid., 89.

s:rx Certainty

1 "Half of New Yorkers Believe U.S. Leaders Had Foreknowledge of Impending 9 I 11 Attacks and Consciously Failed to Act; 66% Call for New Probe of Unanswered Questions by Congress of New York^'s Attorney General, New Zogby International Poll Reveals;' Zogby International, August 30, 2004. Available at http:/ /w.zogby.com, accessed February 20, 2009.

2 ^'�ericans Qy.estion Bush on 9/11 Intelligence;' Angus Reid Global Monitor, October 14, 2006. Available at http:/ /w.angus-reid.com, accessed November 24, 2008.

3 Hargrove and Stemple, ^'Mti-GovernmentAnger Spurs 9 I 11 Conspiracy Beliefs:

4 In Aliens in America I take up belief in extraterrestrial life and alien abduction as a way of exploring the construction of a consensual space Via the exdu�ion of competing conceptions of the real.

5 Fetzer, "Scholars on its First Anniversary:

6 Zizek, The Parallax View, 61.

7 Ibid., 61-62.

8 I am indebted to .Mladen Dolar for this formulation.

9 Dunbar and Reagan, eds., Debunking 9/u Myths, :xv.

10 Ibid.

1 1 Brooks, "The Paranoid Style;' A31.

12 Krugman, "Who's Crazy Now?" Krugman also points out that critics of the Bush administration have often been disparaged as conspiracy theorists.

13 Available at http:/ /www.whitehouse.gov.

14 "The Top September nth Conspiracy Theories;' America.goVj October 25, 2006. Available at http:/ /www.america.gov, accessed February 20, 2009.

1 5 DeMott, "Whitewash as Public Service;' 36.

16 Describing the emergence of a network of independent researchers after 9 In in "Intersecting Facts and Theories on 9 I n;' Joseph P. Firmage writes, "V\lhie the research involved in this truly independent investigation are of varying discipline

NOTES T O CHAPTER SIX

;l93

194

N O TES TO CHAPTER SIX

BIBLJ!:OGRAPBY

196

B IBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAP HY

197

198

BIBLI O GRAPHY

BIBLIO GRAPHY

199