"How Easy is a Bush Supposed A Bear." Shakespeare
After the previous post, it was refreshing to hear some irreveretial comments about Bush from two of my American colleagues. What did they say? Well, something along the lines of:
He is designated not by a proper name but by a letter, W., which signifies nothing but the sheer diacritical gap separating him from his Father. He lives in this space, the interstices of the paternal name, like some Lacanian allegory. Puling son of Noboddady, seemingly baffled by his own existence. The earpiece of the Symbolic Order introduces something foreign into his head – it is language. It passes through the refractory medium of his body and exits the mouth – only a few paralogical ripples betray the presence of the suffering individual speaker.
The blankness of Bush, his emptyness, the absence of distinctive qualities... these are not to be thought of in contradiction to his status as 'leader'. On the contrary, they are essential components. Bush is nobody and everyone, a template that any American might fill. He can act as a cypher, a mouthpiece for other's voices (and this is of course given an uncannily literal twist) Read, by way of further illumination, (and I suspect this will the first and only time you will encounter this juxtaposition) this description of one time Irish leader Charles Stuart Parnell:
The influence exerted on the Irish people by Parnell defies critical analysis. He had a speech defect and a delicate physique; he was ignorant of the history of his native land; his short and fragmentary speeches lacked eloquence, poetry and humour; his cold and formal bearing separated him from his own colleagues; he was a Protestant, a descendant of an aristocratic family, and, as a crowning disgrace, he spoke with a distinct English accent.
The author of this piece, one James Joyce, hits the nail on the head. It is precisely Parnell's 'empty neutrality' which allows him to represent the nation - that all-inclusive 'empty' set which has to include the multifarious sub-sets. Parnell is both no different from his people, unassuming and 'flawed', and yet set apart (Protestant, 'aristocratic') enough to act as a mirror.
With Bush, the logic of identification is similar to that posited by Judith Williamson about the Royal Family. The Royal family are at once removed and yet no different from us in terms of their intrinsic merits, their place is the result of an 'accident' rather than any necessity of talent or ability. It is this combination, Williamson suggests which renders them so suitable as a point of identification. Similarly with Bush, his symbolic place is almost adventitious, unrelated to merit or ability, the very mirror-image of Anyone at all, emptied of positive traits other than the inarticulacy, the puzzlement, the endearing failings of the Average. His apartness, as leader, has been visted upon him almost by chance, not something he has seized like a Destiny, like a fulfilment of his own innermost potential. In Bush, the conduit, the template, the They encounters its own specular image. Or is it the empty place of power itself which finds in Bush its local habitation and name, does he not somehow represent the very empty place of which he occupies?
n.b. some skulls seem to be too thick for the crowbar of humour or thought itself to prise open.