Barack Obama’s Body: The Presidency, the Body Politic, and the Contest over American National Identity
Beyond the formal powers and duties laid down in the Constitution, the presidency is a cultural institution meant to represent—in a very literal sense—the American people. Presidents act as identificatory figures—symbolizing what their supporters hold sacred about the nation. Presidents’ own bodies come to matter particularly at political moments when a new or counter-interpretation of national identity challenges prevailing assumptions. Supporters often interpret their national identity in the figure of the president. As a black candidate in a historically white-ruled nation, Barack Obama’s narration of his background as representatively American has been a critical task both as candidate and as president. Both Obama’s biography and his visual presence have come to play a part in how political issues, from health care to foreign policy, get framed by both supporters and opponents. But does race stand alone in this dynamic of life story and looks? I analyze the challenges faced and opportunities afforded the Obama presidency by comparing him to earlier presidents who were politically associated with moments of broad change in American politics: Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, all of whom depended heavily on biography and physical embodiment to authorize their vision of national identity. Presidential embodiment ultimately diminishes democratic politics because of the strong fixation on a singular political institution it produces.
Leaping Ahead
I chose the title of this issue of Polity for two reasons. First, this is the last issue that I will be editing. So, writing the introduction is bittersweet, even as I look forward to the next surprising twists, turns, and adventures in my career and life. Second, when looking for a common thread that runs through the articles selected for this issue, I discovered that all of them explore the politics of innovation and discontinuity. In other words, the authors look at moments of intense friction when members of a group openly question long-standing practices and current trends, and urge partners in their political order—be it a neighborhood, a diaspora, a commonwealth, a city, or a state—to risk change and leap ahead. At such moments, political disputes feel, paradoxically, both unusually promising and terrifying. After all, the familiar purposes, aims, goals, and values of the political unit are being debated. Political rhetoric becomes momentarily overblown and colorful, as both dreamers and doomsayers seek followers. *** The opening symposium features several eminent political scientists and legal scholars—Rogers Smith, Daniel Tichenor, Anna Law, Rebecca Hamlin, and Elizabeth Cohen—who separately describe past controversies within the United States over immigration quotas, naturalization requirements, and refugee status. Each author focuses on different historical cases, ranging from eighteenth-century debates over the expulsion of potentially seditious Francophile immigrants, to present-day controversies over the deportation of foreign-born children who entered the country without legal permission. All five authors (all of whom relish irony) note how changes in economic conditions have motivated advocates for and opponents to particular immigration policies. The contributors agree that if the United States is to leap thoughtfully and gracefully (and not fall awkwardly) into the future, then American citizens must become alive to the consequences for immigration of different distributions of power between the states and the federal government; must become aware of the ramifications of seemingly straightforward and morally neutral standards, such as time, in the determination of citizenship; and must become attuned to the dramatic shifts in the social composition, hopes, and resources of the unexpected coalitions (what Tichenor calls “strange bedfellows”) for and against change. Polity . Volume 47, Number 3 . July 2015
Inquiring "Tree of Life" at Home: Persian Classic Literature in English Classes.
The recent decades of English Language Teaching (ELT) appear to be particularly concerned with the marginalisation caused by English linguistic, cultural, and academic colonisation and imperialism. Bold footprints of this academic monopoly can be seen in the wide incorporation of abridged or unabridged British and American literary works in foreign language settings. Such literary products are often legitimised as authentic materials authored by native speakers. Inspired by the idea of incorporating non-native literature and translated first language literature into English classes, the authors of this article sought to explore the possibilities of opening spaces for English translations of Persian classic works of literature in English as foreign language classrooms and tracing the language events that unfolded as a result of incorporating such literature. The participants of this two-semester long action research project were non-English major Iranian female university students, majoring in various fields at Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran. The sense of familiarity the students had with such national literary works led to the emergence of language instances lightened by sparks of virtue, vision, life and art.