Photograph by Tina Paul of a sculpture by Adam Kurtzman, New York Times, 7 October
1986, editorial page.
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Reagan was the "thumbs up" president (in the same way that Churchill was a "V for Victory"
man). The thumbs up sign expressed Reagan's supposed restoration of America's confidence in
itself, which is still regularly cited as his greatest achievement. An illustration printed on the editorial
page of New York Times [5 January 1987, A17] replaced the fingers of a fist making the thumbs
up sign with Reagan's facial features, graphically representing him as a multiplicity of appendages
adding up to a First Digit rising proudly above the others. It may be noted that this preeminent
thumb replaces Reagan's most admired body part: his hair-do. Hair dye is another embodiment of
the all-powerful life-giving fluid (the fountain of youth has not only been found, it has been bottled).
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The preceding statements from Reagan and Hubler [1981] are to be found on pp. 3-8, 301.
Many are quoted in Rogin [1987:17-27, 32-33]. Rogin goes into extensive detail on Reagan's
amputation theme.
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According to a New York Times [18 January 1989, A14] chart of Reagan's approval ratings,
his popularity peaked twice in upper sixty percentile range, once after the attempted assassination,
and again after the bombing of Libya, which occurred during an extended period of consistently
high ratings following his second inauguration.
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Rogin [1987] provides a number of examples.
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Examples are a "Gone with the Wind" poster parody showing Ronald "Rhett" Reagan carrying
Margaret "Scarlett" Thatcher in his arms that was widely distributed during his first term; a postcard
featuring a "Portrait of Ronald Reagan as Centaur" [photo of an oil painting by Komar & Melamid,
1981-82; Editions Vormgeving, Rotterdam]; and a "Mister America" postcard entitled "Our
Ronnie" depicting Reagan as a body builder [City Sights, Boundhead, Ontario].
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A typical expression of this view is found in Janet Maslin's review of Reagan's second
autobiography, An American Life [1990]. "Mr. Reagan's appeal came from his ability to be a
larger-than-life reflection of what the nation liked best about itself: an optimism, a determination to
be first, a magnanimous spirit, a stylish wit and brave spirit." "Where's the Rest of Him?," New
York Times Book Review, 18 November 1990, p. 43. It is a testament to the power of Reagan's
reunification strategem that even critics start to talk like him, seeming at times to accept his
metaphysical vision of "the nation" as a unified, isolatable empirical entity rather than an infinity of
irreducibly different component parts.
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J.G. Ballard, the most prescient of Reagan watchers, emphasizes his anality in "Why I want to
Fuck Ronald Reagan" [1972]. Ballard was the first to recognize the political importance of the
mass-mediatized Reagan body. Uncannily, "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan" predicts the
Reagan presidential campaign; it was written in 1969 when Reagan, as governor of California, was
still a regional politician and national laughing-stock. On Reagan's asshole, see also Karen Finley,
"The Constant State of Desire" [1988:151 ("Vomit Belly")].
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"Speaking of Everything," with Howard Cosell, 10 May 1988.
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Diane Rubenstein [1990:253-55]. Rubenstein's analysis of Bush is far more useful than her
passing comments on Reagan, and will be cited below.
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Reagan as magician is another recurring theme. Maslin again provides an example. "Where's
the Rest of Him?," p. 45. There were many variations on the theme. When the scandal of the White
House astrologer broke out toward the end of Reagan's last term, it explained several peculiarities
of his presidency, for example why he had chosen to be sworn in at the highly unusual but
apparently auspicious hour of midnight--echoes of imperial divination. Reagan was not only
associated with white magic. A man shattered the peace of the retired First Couple when he broke
into their estate to strangle Ronnie, convinced he was the Anti-Christ ["Would-Be Killer Thought
Reagan Was Antichrist," Montréal Gazette, 4 December 1990, B6]. Manuel Noriega, Reagan's
Panamanian protégé, had mixed feelings about both his long-time ally and his less cooperative
successor. After the US invasion, voodoo dolls and other Santeria and Condomble paraphernalia
are said to have been found in his private quarters. A portrait of Reagan was sunk in wax at the
bottom of an ashtray. This may explain some of Reagan's ailments. ["Noriega Casts Spell on Bush,"
Montréal Gazette, 26 December 1989].
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The preceding fable is a condensed and slightly tampered with version of a Ballard short story
written in 1988, entitled the "The Secret History of World War 3." [Ballard 1990:23-32].
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"Bush on Attack as He Fights Polls" [Montréal Gazette, 20 January 1992, B3].
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For more examples and a suggestive analysis of Bushspeak, see Rubenstein [1990:258-62].
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"Bush Admits Economy is in 'Free Fall,'" Montréal Gazette, 16 January 1992, A9. Images of
falling and an inability to maintain the distinction between up and down are as constant in
Bushspeak as illness and amputation were in Reagan rhetoric. The free-falling economy, Bush
explained as he campaigned for reelection in New Hampshire, has "gone through an extraordinarily
difficult time, coming off a pinnacle of low unemployment." [Doonesbury, 28 January 1992] In the
astonishing phrase, "But nevertheless, I said to them there's another one that the Nitty Ditty Nitty
Gritty Great Bird--and it says if you want to see a rainbow you've got to stand a little rain"
[Doonesbury, 31 January 1992], the "dirt band" in "Nitty Gritty Dirt Band" becomes a "great bird"
offering the philosophical observation that you can't have color in the sky without mud under foot.
This, too, was a reference to the economy, which the news media had identified as the biggest
campaign issue holding Bush down. For more on the up-and-down economy, see note 21.
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"I was shot down and I was floating around in a little yellow raft setting a record for paddling. I
thought of my family, my mom and dad and the strength I got from them. I thought of my faith, the
separation of church and state." [Mary McGrory, The Washington Post, 29 September 1988, A2;
cited in Rubenstein 1990:260].
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This was Bush's rallying cry in his first campaign swing around New Hampshire in 1992 [Montréal Gazette, 20 January 1992, B3].
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The classic example from the first presidential campaign is Bush's slip-of-the-tongue
explanation of his relationship to Reagan. "For seven and a half years, I have worked alongside him
and I am proud to be his partner. We have had triumphs, we have made mistakes, we have had
sex." After correcting "sex" to "setbacks," Bush goes on to compare himself to a "javelin thrower
who won the coin toss and elected to receive." [New York Times, 26 May 1988, p. A32] In the
first statement, the Bush-Reagan possession relation is translated into a physical penetration
transforming the Bush body's nominal gender or apparent sexual orientation, and inviting the most
obvious of Freudian interpretations. The "correction's" contraction of three games into one can be
taken as telegraphic expression of this article's main points about Bush: the "reception" of indirect
discourse, the two faces of the coin, and the projectile motion of the missile, in this case a
hand-held variety.
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On the "thing" thing as "a surplus object, a left-over of the Real which eludes symbolization,"
see Rubenstein 1990:261. In the second Bushspeak period (see next note) "thing" was replaced by
"stuff" or "and all of that," as in the rousing patriotic cry, "Remember Lincoln, going to his knees and
all that stuff?" [Newsweek, 27 January 1992, p. 19] or the environment-president statement of
concern, "All across the country, we have a spotted owl problem. And yes, we want to see that
little furry-feathery guy protected and all of that" [Doonesbury, 30 January 1992].
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For plentiful examples from the second Bushspeak period, see "A Little Rain and Frogs with
Wings," Newsweek, 27 January 1992, 18-19; "Bush on Attack as He Fights Polls," Montréal
Gazette, 20 January 1992, B3; and Doonesbury, 27 January-1 February 1992. In a desperate
attempt to regain his wartime popularity, Bush grasped at the straw of his own Persian Gulf
rhetoric. He tried to shake off Bushspeak II by bringing his other face back home, but only
metaphorically. In his 1992 State of the Union address, on which he had pinned his hopes for a win
in the New Hampshire primary, he spoke in heroic terms of the fight for the economy, casting the
Democrats in the role of Saddam Hussein. He recycled the Gulf Crisis tactic of setting a deadline,
in this case for passage by the Democratic-controlled Congress of his timid reform package, and
repeated what he considered to be his most memorable war line: "This will not stand" ["Bush Vows
Economic Relief and Proposes Modest Steps in State of Union Talk," New York Times, 29
January 1992, A1] He was referring to the recession, but his persistent jokes on the campaign trail
about how expensive it had been to dry-clean the Japanese Prime Minister's suit were a constant
reminder that the only thing having a hard time standing was Bush himself ["President Trying to
Bury Japan Incident with Humor," Montréal Gazette, 30 January 1992, A10].
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Kitty Kelly recounts several famous incidents where Nancy had to prompt Ronnie [1990:264,
418-19, 458]. Kelly's biography is the most spectacular instance of Nancy-bashing and the most
sustained example of the "behind every man ... " scenario for the Reagan years. Nancy Reagan
appeared almost simultaneously with Reagan's second autobiography, An American Life, and
Millie's Book, and out-performed them both in terms of sales and media attention. Both Time and
Newsweek devoted their front covers of their 22 April 1991 issues to the controversy it provoked.
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What we are calling the "body without an image" is in many ways comparable to Kristeva's
chora: "an extremely mobile and provisional articulation constituted by movements and their
ephemeral stases. We differentiate this uncertain and indeterminate articulation from a disposition
that already depends on representation, lends itself to phenomenological, spatial intuition, and gives
rise to a geometry. ... Although the chora can be designated and regulated, it can never be
definitively posited: as a result, one can situate the chora and, if necessary, lend it a topology, but
one can never give it axiomatic form. The chora is not yet a position that represents something for
someone (i.e., it is not a sign); nor is it a position that represents someone for another position (i.e.,
it is not yet a signifier either) ... Neither model nor copy, the chora precedes and underlies figuation
and thus specularization, and is analogous only to vocal or kinetic rhythm. ... Though deprived of
unity, identity, or deity, the chora is nevertheless subject to a regulating process" [Kristeva
1984:25-26].
Despite the many convergences, we differ from Kristeva on three major points: 1) Kristeva roots
the chora in the individual body, in the form of drives understood as quantities of biological energy
obeying thermodynamic laws of conservation ("discrete quantities of energy move through the body
of the subject who is not yet constituted as such and, in the course of his development, they are
arranged according to the various constraints imposed on this body," 25). This risks an essentialism
we reject. The "body without an image" is not in bodies, but between them. We would take the
body's constitutive interrelatedness so far as to say that a body exists outside of itself. Bodies do
not have interactions; they are interactions, mobile sites of ever-changing interaction. The questions,
Individual or Group?, Nature or Culture?, Biological or Technological?, are of little or no
importance to us: the body is always both at once, always in different ways (it is the perpetual point
of contact and interchange between these and any number of other "opposites"). In spite of our use
of such terms as "flow-chart," we resist the thermodynamic model of the drives Kristeva inherits
from Freud. We are more inclined to think of the body without an image as quantum rather than
quantitative (see "Conclusion: First and Last Emperors," note 2). 2) We would omit the "yet" from
"not yet a sign," "not yet a signifier." The body without an image as we conceive it is not pre-
(-signifying, -symbolic). It strictly coincides with what it becomes. It may under certain
circumstances, in certain cultures, at certain periods, become signifying. However, that is only one
of its potentials. It is not "generated in order to attain this signifying position" [Kristeva 1984:26]. 3)
We do not think of the body without an image as in any way a "totality" [1984:25]. We see it as
ineradicably multiple (straddling levels of existence as well as bridging "individual" bodies). To say
that the body without an image "coincides with what it becomes" and that it becomes many things
implies a fractured temporality and ontological self-divergence incompatible with any notion either
of anteriority or of totality.
The closest philosophical kin of the "body without an image" is Deleuze and Guattari's "body
without organs" [1983:9-15, 325-29; 1987:149-66, 506-508].
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On the "exemplary" as logically distinct from the "general" and as ontologically prior to the
"particular"--in other words as "singular" in a way that is not opposed to "multiple"--see Agamben
[1990:passim]. See also Badiou [1989:85-92], and Gilles Deleuze [1990a:passim].
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The relation of the named body without an image to politics is the same as the relation of what
Deleuze and Guattari call "conceptual personnages" to philosophy: "The conceptual personnage is
not the representative of the philosopher, to the contrary the philosopher is merely the envelop of
his or her principal conceptual personnage, as well as of all the others; it is they who are the
intecessors, the true subject of philosophy. The conceptual personnages are the 'heteronyms' of the
philosopher, while the name of the philosopher is simply a pseudonym for the personnages. I am no
longer me, but an aptitude of thought to see itself and develop itself on a plane that crosses through
me in several places. The conceptual personnage has nothing to do with an abstract personification,
a symbol, or an allegory--for it lives, it insists. The philosopher is the indiosyncrasy of his or her
conceptual personnages. It is the destiny of the philosopher to become his or her conceptual
personnage or personnages, at the same time as these personnages become other than what they
have historically been." [Deleuze 1991: 62-63].
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""[The] obliteration of the qualitative in sensation through its arithmetical homogenization is a
crucial part of modernization" [Crary 1990:147].
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The word "human" is in quotation marks both because we do not assume that functions
attached to humanoid bodies are necessarily "human" functions, and because we take issue with the
prevailing "prosthesis" theory of technological change. New technologies materializing functions
such as command and perception are not prostheses of "human" organs. They do not simply repeat
"human" functions and replace the organs performing them. Every repetition is a translation: the
functions performed alter by virtue of being implanted in a new materiality operating on a different
level from the human and enabling different kinds of connections. "Human" organs are not rendered
obsolete by technology; on the contrary, they are always reintegrated with it. The screen does not
replace the eye; the eye watches the screen. The robot does not replace the hand; the hand repairs
the robot. The relation is not one of supplanting but of supplementarity: technological innovation
extracts functions from an existing stratum in order to add a stratum to existence. This brings a
reconfiguration rather than an outright replacement of the stratum from which functions are
extracted (at least at first; ultimate supplanting is indeed a possibility). In what follows,
technologized functions will often be called exhuman functions in order to express this
extractive-supplemental relation between the technological apparatus and the "human."
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