Page 78 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 78
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
New Right was joined by a number of various organisations of far Right
such as Young Americans for Freedom, John Birch Society, and World An-
ti-Communist League to name just a few. Interesting connections to the
Republican Party were visible. On the way to power the Republicans made
use of zealots in this groups and organisations, but in spite of a degree of
anti-abortionist rhetoric and some legislative set-backs concerning wom-
en’s freedom of choice, the actual politics under Reagan did not totally suc-
cumb to all aspirations of the far right. The problem of abortion appears to
be a politically mobilising issue by being always caught in a series of equiv-
alences, which visibly mark the field of the conservative discourse: to ad-
vocate “life” means to support “the family”, which further on means to up-
hold “morality”, that under a historical signifier is identified as adherence
to “America”. The logic of such discourse is a reduction of differences: “/.../
the logic of equivalence is a logic of the simplification of political space,
while the logic of difference is a logic of its expansion and increasing com-
plexity” (Laclau, Mouffe, 1985: p. 130).
The same rule applies to the times of the activity of Senator McCar-
thy’s HUAC that pursued not only “communists” but also homosexuals,
left wing liberals and other “non-Americans”. Recent American neo-con-
servatism, of course, may be comprehended as having its historic roots in
the notorious witch-hunt of the fifties. However, a more recent movement
has much broader sociological reasons, which incorporate a changing role
of women in society and, naturally, the representations of political antago-
nist in the conservative mind-set. In this case, the adversary is the feminist
movement that takes place, which was formerly occupied by communism
in the views of anti-trade-unionist, Rifle Association, advocates of death
penalty, and so on. An ideological construction with a moral emphasis,
clearly related to repressive convictions about sex, makes a framework of
these political trends. In American preconceptions, the anti-abortion plat-
form evidently comprises a distinct view on sex, in particular on sexual
pleasure, and within this context it contains the disfavouring of teenage
sex, sex before marriage, to different degrees and oppositions to contracep-
tives, and even a resistance against the sexual education.
76
New Right was joined by a number of various organisations of far Right
such as Young Americans for Freedom, John Birch Society, and World An-
ti-Communist League to name just a few. Interesting connections to the
Republican Party were visible. On the way to power the Republicans made
use of zealots in this groups and organisations, but in spite of a degree of
anti-abortionist rhetoric and some legislative set-backs concerning wom-
en’s freedom of choice, the actual politics under Reagan did not totally suc-
cumb to all aspirations of the far right. The problem of abortion appears to
be a politically mobilising issue by being always caught in a series of equiv-
alences, which visibly mark the field of the conservative discourse: to ad-
vocate “life” means to support “the family”, which further on means to up-
hold “morality”, that under a historical signifier is identified as adherence
to “America”. The logic of such discourse is a reduction of differences: “/.../
the logic of equivalence is a logic of the simplification of political space,
while the logic of difference is a logic of its expansion and increasing com-
plexity” (Laclau, Mouffe, 1985: p. 130).
The same rule applies to the times of the activity of Senator McCar-
thy’s HUAC that pursued not only “communists” but also homosexuals,
left wing liberals and other “non-Americans”. Recent American neo-con-
servatism, of course, may be comprehended as having its historic roots in
the notorious witch-hunt of the fifties. However, a more recent movement
has much broader sociological reasons, which incorporate a changing role
of women in society and, naturally, the representations of political antago-
nist in the conservative mind-set. In this case, the adversary is the feminist
movement that takes place, which was formerly occupied by communism
in the views of anti-trade-unionist, Rifle Association, advocates of death
penalty, and so on. An ideological construction with a moral emphasis,
clearly related to repressive convictions about sex, makes a framework of
these political trends. In American preconceptions, the anti-abortion plat-
form evidently comprises a distinct view on sex, in particular on sexual
pleasure, and within this context it contains the disfavouring of teenage
sex, sex before marriage, to different degrees and oppositions to contracep-
tives, and even a resistance against the sexual education.
76
