Politics and

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Politics and the political

• Pol Sci 110DA

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PS 110DA

• Tracy Strong, Office hours
• W 10-12 (in SSB 374) or by appointment at
  tstrong_at_ucsd.edu, or by accident
• Rick Barrett, Office hours

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New Requirements

• Paper as per syllabus
• On May 27 a one hour written exam in class
• Instead of the final exam, a final paper on
  topics to be handed out, due anytime before the
  date of the exam (June 12 at 7pm)

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PS 110DA - Introductory

• Fundamental question how is one to understand
  the relation between what an individual is as an
  individual and what an individual is as a member
  of a polity (i.e. a citizen). A conversation is
  political when a statement made in the first
  person singular constitutes a claim on another
  person, i.e. on a first person plural, a we.
• Before getting into specifics, let us consider
  the question analytically. Let us look at
  political and non-political conversations

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Conversation I not political

• A. Eavesdropping on private conversations
  without a warrant is un-American.
• B. How can you say that? The country is in
  danger from terrorists.
• A. Well, that is what I feel.

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Conversation political

• A. Eavesdropping on private conversations
  without a warrant is un-American.
• B. How can you say that? The country is in
  danger from terrorists.
• A. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution
  clearly forbids it.

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Further political conversation

• A. Eavesdropping on private conversations
  without a warrant is un-American.
• B. How can you say that? The country is in
  danger from terrorists.
• A. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution
  clearly forbids it.
• B. In cases like this one the President can make
  an exception. Lincoln did it during the Civil War.

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Contrast with compulsion

• A. 2 2 4.
• B. I think it is 22.
• A. No that is a plus sign, not some symbol
  for association.
• B. Oh, of course! You are right.

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Economic conversation

•  
• A. I would like to buy that car.
• B. It really too expensive for you, given your
  income.
• A. Nevertheless, I am going to I really want
  it. Or Damn! I guess you are right.

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Political / Economic

• A. Eavesdropping on private conversations without
  a warrant is un-American.
• B. Perhaps so, but that is a small price to pay
  given the danger.

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What is wrong here?

• LEAR To GONERIL
• I'll go with theeThy fifty yet doth double five
  and twenty,And thou art twice her love.
• GONERIL
• Hear me, my lordWhat need you five and twenty,
  ten, or five,To follow in a house where twice so
  manyHave a command to tend you?
• REGAN
• What need one?
• KING LEAR
• O, reason not the need our basest beggarsAre in
  the poorest thing superfluousAllow not nature
  more than nature needs,Man's life's as cheap as
  beast's
• Act II, sc. 4

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With whom do I associate myself? (citizenship)

• When matters are political, the consent I have
  given speaks not only for myself but also speaks
  for makes a claim on -- others. I speak for
  I claim to speak for -- the others with whom I
  associate myself. Likewise they speak for and
  claim to speak for me.

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I cannot for an instant recognize . . .
as my government that which is
the slave's government also.
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The political and contingency

• If the political is for these reasons more
  extensive that I speak not only for myself but
  my words must carry the claim to speak for others
  the political is also for that reason perhaps
  the most fragile of human activities. I can
  speak for myself in other realms but in politics
  the judgment of others and the possibility of
  being refused is ever immediately present.
  Others may want to silence it I may even not
  note or know that I am silenced there are so
  many others speaking. If the political depends on
  the possibility of acknowledgement of a claim
  that I make as a claim about us, if my claim
  falls on deaf ears and fallow ground, then I
  cannot act politically. Note that I do not mean
  that others must accept what I say the political
  requires only that they acknowledge it as a
  claim.

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The Triumph of the Will

• 1933, Hitler is chosen Chancellor after his Party
  (NSDAP Nazis) received over 30 of vote as
  largest party in Germany.
• 1934. There are two major factions to the NSDAP
  (the SA and the SS). The SA is the more
  populist and radical, against large capital.
• Hitler needs the support of large business and
  the army and eliminates the leadership of the SA
  (Night of the Long Knives June, 1934)

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Triumph of the Will

• September 1934 Huge Rally of the Party in the
  town of Nuremberg. This is filmed by Leni
  Riefenstahl, whose film shows the appeal of the
  we that Hitler offered and is considered
  perhaps the greatest film of its kind ever made.
• Not so much politics as spectacle but perhaps
  spectacle as politics (what technology can do).

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Riefenstahl later says

• "If you see this film again today you ascertain
  that it doesn't contain a single reconstructed
  scene. Everything in it is true. And it contains
  no tendentious commentary at all. It is history.
  A pure historical film it is film-vérité. It
  reflects the truth that was then in 1934,
  history. It is therefore a documentary. Not a
  propaganda film. Oh! I know very well what
  propaganda is. That consists of recreating events
  in order to illustrate a thesis, or, in the face
  of certain events, to let one thing go in order
  to accentuate another. I found myself, me, at the
  heart of an event which was the reality of a
  certain time and a certain place. My film is
  composed of what stemmed from that."

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(No Transcript)