Organized ruling blocs attempt to rearticulate the social and cultural landscape in emotional and affective terms, evacuating from them the potential for real political engagement. As cultural theorist Lawrence Grossberg submits in We Gotta Get Out of This Place, “precisely by repoliticizing and re-ideologizing all of the social relations and cultural practices of everyday life, the new conservatism is effectively depoliticizing a large part of the population. It is creating a ‘demilitarized zone’ within everyday life through a series of ‘strategies’ directed at the national popular,” (259). Thus when Sarah Palin sneers at the community activism of Barack Obama and applauds herself, on the basis of her hockeymomdom, for her “real” American political work, she erases a potent site of democratic political action (community organizing) and politicizes an emotionally constructed identity (hockey mom) that in fact offers no possibility for involvement. Being-like replaces doing.The revelations that the highest paid member of Palin's staff is a make-up artist and that her wardrobe drained $150,000 from the RNC coffers raise an interesting point about Palin's role in this election. While much has been made of the price tag and how this distances her from her own hockey mom image, I don't think this is the real issue. Based on my experience growing up in an elite Minnesota suburb, hockey moms can and do spend a pretty penny on their wardrobes. Hockey is an expensive sport. Though I can nostalgically remember neighborhood boys (girls didn't play hockey in those days) playing pick-up games on the pond in our backyard, in reality the equipment, the ice time, and the fees for playing in leagues all add up. There is a status attached to playing hockey, just as there is status attached to funding hockey - and hockey moms often participate in the competitive consumption that surround the sport.
What I wish I was reading more of, then, is not about her distance from Joe Six Pack (or the Joe du jour, Joe the Plumber), but about her distance from feminism. If the highest paid member of your staff is there to make you look pretty - rather than, say, to educate you on foreign policy - then it is very clear what your role in the campaign is: to be the prop woman whose being-like (glamorous eye candy) replaces any sense of doing (actually helping to administrate and guide policy (or run the Senate, as Palin seems to believe)). Thus the political power of the Vice Presidency is evacuated. Which, maybe, is along the lines of what the framers thought, although that's a different inquiry entirely. My point is that we have a woman on the ticket who spouts everyday appeal and, at times, feminist sensibilities, and yet she is a woman who ultimately was chosen by the RNC precisely because she does not threaten patriarchy. At the same time, she distracts and detracts from real political engagement; when she asks, "Who is Barack Obama?" she redirects policy debate into identity.
I don't mean to vilify Palin as the creator of this strategy. Though she is a participant, she is not the originator. I do, however, believe that affective notions of identity and lifestyle are crucial elements of contemporary consumer culture. They are used to sell products, politics, and culture. Which is why I am so passionate about studying it; we need to find modes of resistance to consumer culture if we are to regain actual power.
