Politics Of Scandal Research Articles

American Catholic Bishops and the Politics of Scandal: Rhetoric of Authority. By Meaghan O'Keefe. Routledge Studies in Religion. New York: Routledge, 2019. 177 pages. $140.00.

American Catholic Bishops and the Politics of Scandal: Rhetoric of Authority. By Meaghan O'Keefe. Routledge Studies in Religion. New York: Routledge, 2019. 177 pages. $140.00.

American Catholic Bishops and the Politics of Scandal: Rhetoric of Authority by Meaghan O'Keefe

Reviewed by: American Catholic Bishops and the Politics of Scandal: Rhetoric of Authority by Meaghan O'Keefe Anthony M. Wachs American Catholic Bishops and the Politics of Scandal: Rhetoric of Authority. By Meaghan O'Keefe. New York: Routledge, 2019. 177 pp. $155.00. The stated goals of O'Keefe's American Catholic Bishops and the Politics of Scandal: Rhetoric of Authority are "(1) to show how structures of argument emerge and are adopted in order to advance particular positions, (2) to link current work in linguistics to the long tradition of rhetoric, and (3) to provide insight on how a specific traditional religious organization has dealt with its loss of authority" (165). To accomplish these goals, O'Keefe analyzes the rhetorical strategies contained primarily within recent U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) voting guides in the context of the bishops' loss of authority due to the coverups of priest sexual abuse. One of the most interesting elements of the book is concerned with the unique rhetorical situation of authoritative institutions making arguments within an individualistic culture. More specifically, she explores the question of "how can a group of leaders widely viewed as morally deficient tell anyone how to form their conscience?" (18). In particular, she argues that the USCCB is able to avoid the questioning of its moral standing by utilizing repetition and the question/answer format of the Baltimore Catechism as a persuasive means of establishing authority and "simultaneously stabilizing terms that are contested" (8). Along these lines, O'Keefe analyzes the USCCB voting guides' use of the terminology of "well-formed conscience," "intrinsic evil," and "the dignity of the human person." The most interesting arguments provided in the text are 1) that the bishops' arguments are unique to the American context and are not representative of official teachings of the church concerning these matters, and 2) that the bishops shifted their position with regards to racism and racist acts to appeal to conservative Evangelical Protestants having lost influence over the American laity. In one of the most interesting chapters, and yet possibly telling of her perspective, she provides a constructive read of rhetoric of the Nuns on the Bus campaign in contrast to the USCCB's failed Fortnite for Freedom [End Page 83] campaign. The comparison of these two campaigns is apropos, and yet while she spent most of the book deconstructing the bishops' attempts to maintain doctrinal continuity with church teaching, she provides a constructive approach to the more heterodox Leadership Conference of Women Religious. My largest issue with the text is with regards to the legitimate disciplinary norms concerning rhetoric. An overarching topic of my education and research within rhetorical studies concerns the church's ignorance of its own rhetorical tradition, which is tragic on account of the lost means for engaging with the culture and accomplishing the New Evangelization. However, rhetoric as developed by O'Keefe is far removed from that tradition. For instance, this same study could have been performed utilizing the realist semiotics of St. Augustine rather than relying on the social constructivist assumptions of contemporary rhetorical theorists. Along these lines, O'Keefe notes that the purview of her project is to give "an account of particular texts within a particular period of time, not a study of the rich Catholic tradition on social teaching" (5). The analysis has little to do with the truth of arguments made by the USCCB, but rather the grammatical and textual effects of language upon discourses of authority and power in ideological structures. With that said, I recommend American Catholic Bishops and the Politics of Scandal: Rhetoric of Authority for scholars and teachers interested in engaging with this form of textual, linguistic analysis. However, if one is looking to learn or teach about the rhetoric in a manner that would productively allow for Catholics to engage with the culture, especially through learning about the rhetorical failures of USCCB, this book is not that. Even with my theoretical differences with regards to O'Keefe's approach, I recommend its addition to institutional libraries. Specifically on account of the potential for extending her case study concerning the USCCB to other authoritative institutions. The analysis may be fruitful for...

Moral Cultures, Reputation Work, and the Politics of Scandal

Status has long been a core concept motivating sociology as a discipline. As related to the positioning and valuing of individuals, status often takes the form of reputation. How is an individual treated as a cultural object with identity provided by those who have reason to judge? Reputation may be given to known individuals, to those who are widely celebrated within a society, and to those whose past achievements are worth recalling through institutionalized forms of memory. Not all reputations are positive, and individuals may be remembered for misdeeds or violations of norms as embedded in the recall of scandal, political and otherwise. Both reputation and scandal have effects within the interaction order, local group cultures, and institutional structures, including media. As consensus develops, the linkages of individuals and their known status shape shared conceptions of morality.

Política y biopolítica: una aproximación desde Foucault, Agamben y Rancière

Este artículo busca esclarecer conceptualmente la diferencia entre política y biopolí-tica. Para alcanzar este objetivo, el texto explora la preocupación de Foucault por determinar cómo la vida biológica empieza a ser conducida por las técnicas modernas de gobierno. Enseguida pone en evidencia la preocupación de Agamben por mostrar que la biopolítica es la forma metafísica por excelencia que configura lo político en Occidente. Finalmente, y con la ayuda de Rancière, se muestra que la biopolítica no es tanto una forma metafísica que produce nuda vida, sino una forma del reparto policial de lo sensible que reacciona al escándalo que trae consigo la política.

Pós-verdade, neoliberalismo e cinismo institucional

Este texto trata da conjuntura política brasileira e do processo que redundou no golpe de Estado que destituiu a presidente eleita Dilma Rousseff. Articulando as noções de regime de verdade, práticas discursivas e política de escândalo, o texto avança na descrição da formação de uma articulação das classes dominantes, corporações da mídia, Ministério Público e Poder Judiciário para destruir as possibilidades eleitorais das forças de esquerda no Brasil, abrindo caminho para a implementação do receituário neoliberal. Apropriando-se principalmente da ideia do combate à corrupção, os velhos esquemas do poder econômico organizam a construção de discursos e ações de Estado que compõem o cinismo institucional como política de Estado.

間メディア民主主義と〈世論〉―2016年都知事選をめぐるスキャンダル・ポリティクス

間メディア民主主義と〈世論〉―2016年都知事選をめぐるスキャンダル・ポリティクス

‘We have to compliment the Aristocracy on the exhibition of their morals': the Ellenborough divorce case (1830) and the politics of scandal in pre-reform London and Vormärz Vienna

Using the 1830 divorce of Lord and Lady Ellenborough as a case study, this article sheds more light on the mechanisms of sexual scandal in early nineteenth-century Europe. It contrasts the publicity and political meaning given to the adultery of Lady Ellenborough and the Austrian envoy Felix zu Schwarzenberg in London and Vienna. Whereas radical and moderate reformers exploited the divorce to contest aristocratic leadership and to propagate a contrasting model of domesticity in the British press, the Austrian government went to great lengths to cover up the affair. Both Austrian diplomatic correspondence and British high-society letters and diaries from before and during the scandal show an awareness of the damage that disclosures about the private affairs of the elite could cause.

Betraying the own-most: Heidegger and pitfalls of being-there

The kind invitation of Benedikt Korf to make a contribution to the Heidegger debate, which once again burst out after the publication of the “Black Notebooks”, was at the same time welcome and challenging. The debate had already ignited a discussion among us, the ones co-authoring this commentary, as most of the reactions to Heidegger’s scandalous politics seemed to follow quite familiar paths. Ever since the book of Victor Farias Heidegger and Nazism (1989) came out in the end of the 1980s, Heidegger’s political engagement, its relation to his philosophical corpus in particular, has been one of the long-running disputes in the fields of philosophy, social sciences and beyond. Heidegger’s engagement with National Socialism has been revealed to be much more profound than Heidegger himself had led us to believe, as evidenced by the posthumously published Der Spiegel interview (Heidegger, 1981). The amount of commentaries is overwhelming. On the one hand, are the scandalous readings poorly engaging with Heidegger’s philosophical thinking, while on the other, the philosophical commentaries separating “Heidegger the man” solely from the “Heidegger the philosopher”. It hardly comes as a surprise that this ambiguity can be found also in the reception of Heidegger in the geographical literature (See Harvey, 1996:299–302; Massey, 2004; cf. Elden, 2005; Paddock, 2004; Rose, 2012). The critiques in particular have presented confusing readings from time to time, that have framed Heidegger’s political engagement during the 1930s as an outcome of the concepts Heidegger actually developed much later on (Malpas, 2006:17–27; Joronen, 2013a:629). More nuanced readings have thus been a welcome contribution that, by focusing on the contexts where Heidegger developed his philosophical thoughts, have been able, at least to some extent, to explain Heidegger’s philosophical turns as reactions to the political climate of his time (and place). In particular, these writings have helped us to understand what was behind Heidegger’s engagement, but more importantly, what do Heidegger’s own views tell about National Socialism itself (See Elden, 2006; Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, 1990)? An entirely different debate, concerned more with Heidegger’s omissions than his actions, has been formed around Heidegger’s profound silence about his political engagement (Derrida, 1991). Heidegger’s silence of course did bother thinkers already during Heidegger’s lifetime. Herbert Marcuse, a student of Heidegger, for instance insisted on a personal exchange of letters in 1947 that Heidegger should more clearly and categorically resign himself from National Socialism (Marcuse et al., 1991). In every way Heidegger’s response was unsatisfactory, seeking excuses such as how hard it was to live in Germany, or even worse (for Heidegger at least), making calculative references to the amount of suffering East Germans had experienced, as if there was some utilitarian measure we could use to make Nazi politics weigh less, to be “less evil” (Weizman, 2011). Although the reaction to the recently published the Black Notebooks (Schwarze Hefte 2014–2015), which date back to the periods of 1931–1938 (Uberlegungen II–VI), 1938/1939 (Uberlegungen VII-XV), 1939–1941 (Uberlegungen XII–XV) and 1942–1948 (Gesaumtausgabe 97, Anmerkungen I–V), seems quite overblown in relation to the overall novelty of the content, their publication has without doubt brought to our attention disturbing material, which one cannot easily put aside when engaging with the works of Heidegger (see Babich, 2016; Di Cesare, 2015; Fried, 2014; Gordon, 2014; Korf, 2014; Polt, 2015; Strohmayer, 2015). Although the discussion of Heidegger’s anti-Semitism has been around for a long time, Heidegger’s claim that Jews, who according to him had become one of the central figures of the mod-

From Scandalous Politics to Public Scandal: Corruption, Media, and the Collapse of the Estrada Regime in the Philippines

In January 2001, a peaceful urban revolt ousted President Joseph Estrada of the Philippines amid evidence of the president's involvement in illegal gambling. Using Estrada's ouster as a case study, this article examines the ground‐up process that turns everyday criminality in the Philippines into public scandal. It contends that scandalous politics—acts of illegality perpetrated by the political elite in various localities—are a constant feature of the Philippine state. However, it is only when these acts become legible to the observers of national politics that a public scandal occurs. In examining the nexus between scandalous politics and public scandal, the article views scandal as a mediated phenomenon, one premised on the concerns of middle‐class politics in Manila.Noong Enero 2001, natanggal sa pwesto si Pangulong Joseph Estrada nang malantad ang katibayan ng kanyang pagkasangkot sa ilegal na pagsusugal. Sa pamamagitan ng halimbawa ng pagkatanggal ni Estrada, kinikilatis ng artikulong ito ang proseso kung saan ang mga pang‐araw‐araw na krimen sa Pilipinas ay nagiging pampublikong iskandalo. Ginigiit nito na ang maiskandalong pulitika—mga gawaing ilegal ng mga elit sa iba't ibang lokalidad—ay isang patuloy na katangian ng estado sa Pilipinas. Subalit nagiging pampublikong iskandalo lamang ang mga gawaing ito kapag napapansin ito ng mga tagapagmasid ng pulitika sa sentro ng bayan. Sa pagkilatis ng koneksyon ng maiskandalong pulitika at pambulikong iskandalo, tinitingnan ng artikulong ito ang iskandalo bilang isang penomenang nakabatay sa mga isyung mahalaga sa burgis na pulitika sa Maynila.

Bill Clinton: building a bridge to the new millennium

Prologue: Inauguration 1993 Chapter 1 Boy from Becomes The Man from Hope Chapter 2 To the White House Chapter 3 Building the Bridge: Clinton's Domestic Agenda Chapter 4 Foreign Challenges in a Post-Cold War Environment Chapter 5 Politics of Scandal and the Impeachment Crisis Chapter 6 After the White House Epilogue: On the Question of Presidential Greatness Documents Bibliography Index

Scandalous Politics: Child Welfare Policy in the States by Juliet F. Gainsborough

Journal Article Scandalous Politics: Child Welfare Policy in the States by Juliet F. Gainsborough Get access Scandalous Politics: Child Welfare Policy in the States by Juliet F. Gainsborough. Washington, DC, Georgetown University Press, 2010. 207 pp. $26.95. Mary Elizabeth Collins Mary Elizabeth Collins Boston University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 127, Issue 2, Summer 2012, Pages 341–343, https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-165X.2012.tb02268.x Published: 25 March 2013

Teaching and Learning Guide for: ‘Representing the Duke of Buckingham: Libel, Counter-Libel and the Example of The Emperor’s Favourite’

Teaching and Learning Guide for: ‘Representing the Duke of Buckingham: Libel, Counter-Libel and the Example of The Emperor’s Favourite’

Scandalous Politics: Child Welfare Policy in the States. By Juliet F. Gainsborough. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010. 216p. $26.95.

Scandalous Politics: Child Welfare Policy in the States. By Juliet F. Gainsborough. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010. 216p. $26.95.

Scandalous politics: child welfare policy in the States

Preface List of Abbreviations 1. Introduction: Child Welfare and the Politics of Scandal 2. The Swinging Pendulum: Child Welfare Policy at the National Level 3. States, Scandals, and Child Welfare Policy 4. Florida: Scandal, Electoral Politics, and Leadership Change 5. Colorado: Investigative Journalism, Local Control, and Minor Reform 6. New Jersey: Scandals, Courts, and Ongoing Reform 7. Conclusion: Scandalous Politics Appendix 1: Testimony at Congressional Hearings on Child Welfare Appendix 2: Data Sources and Descriptive Statistics for Chapter 3 References Selected Interviews Index

Genre on time. Fiction film framings of scandalous politics in Denmark since 2001

In Denmark the political fiction film has not been at the centre of attention for film-makers, and when it has been explored it has in fact not been a very successful genre. However, recently, an interest in the political sphere has emerged among film-makers in Denmark. Simultaneously, the political culture in Denmark since the turn of the century has become less focused on a welfare and solidarity consensus, and it has created new types of conflicts where the population has become more sceptical towards the political system and also towards the journalistic credo. The article shows how the socio-cultural political context developed especially since 2001 interacts with the content and form of political fiction films, and how the films are embedded in a general mediatization of culture which implies that subject matter related to, for example, politics is framed in popular form in news and in fiction films.

Playing the ‘race card’: white anxieties and the expression and repression of popular racisms in the 1997 UK election

ABSTRACT Vautier's article is a case study of a particular moment in the 1997 election campaign in the United Kingdom when a Conservative politician, Nicholas Budgen, was accused of ‘playing the race card’ during a House of Commons debate in the run-up to the May general election. Here, as in other moments when this political game is discussed, the term ‘race card’ appears in both political commentary and in academic analysis as a taken-for-granted term. Its use as an unquestioned general descriptor overlooks how these moments of scandalous politics work to replay and reinforce, albeit with contemporary adjustments, longstanding ideas of national belonging and so-called racial truths. Commonsense understandings and representations of racial difference work to sustain racialized anxieties, addressed here as white anxieties. White anxiety refers to the (often implicit and routine) fear, resentment and indignation that people can experience within white-dominated societies, such as Britain, in response to imagined displacement by those identified as racially or ethnically different. Election campaigns are important moments when issues of national identity, nation and belonging are invoked as voters are asked to think about how, and by whom, the nation should be managed. Politicians, with the complicity and the separate efforts of the media, often marshal white anxieties by reinforcing notions of difference in speeches and debates over multiculturalism, immigration and scarcity with regard to resources such as jobs, housing and health services. These themes also sustain whiteness as the naturalized cultural capital of belonging and citizenship. Election campaigns, in terms of both official and unofficial politics and media participation are discursive spaces that operate to sustain commonsense notions of racialized difference and otherness. Taken-for-granted entitlements are posited by some as under threat with Whites as potential losers of material and symbolic resources. The aim is to bring the discourses that marshal and sustain such anxieties into sharper view. The analysis of this case study illustrates racialized discourses that are relevant to a range of contexts, not least to more recent events and campaigns in British politics in which similar narrative tropes are deployed, including, for example, the frequent references to so-called bogus asylum-seekers, post-7/7 attempts to link terror to cultural difference, and the intermittent calls for further immigration limits by both the press and politicians in recent years.

Political Scandal and the Politics of Exposure: From Watergate to Lewinsky and Beyond

Abstract The paper advances an interpretation of political scandal and its place in democratic politics, taking the scandals of the ‘Watergate era’ in American politics as its evidential basis. The interpretation focuses on an aspect of political scandal that has been neglected in existing treatments, namely the politically constructed rather than epistemologically simple nature of scandalous ‘exposure’. The career of the ‘smoking gun’ in the Watergate era provides illustration. The paper goes on to relate political scandal as both symptom and stimulus to trends in late-modern democratization concerning ‘hyperpolitics’ (political contestation at all stages of the decision-making process) and ‘metainformation’ (information about the providers of information). On this basis, the generalization of scandal politics as a typical mode of democratic politics is suggested.

The Autocracy of Love and the Legitimacy of Empire: Intimacy, Power and Scandal in Nineteenth‐Century Metlakahtlah

This paper examines the politics of intimacy, power, and scandal at Metlakahtlah, a Church of England mission village in northern British Columbia, Canada, from 1862 to 1885, in order to cast light on settler colonialism and its aftermath. It particularly examines Metlakahtlah's main missionary, William Duncan, his relationships with young female converts and missionary women, and, perhaps more importantly, the stories that were told about them. Stories of Duncan's relationships with young Tsimshian women that circulated throughout settler society reveal the central place of sexuality to both critiques and defences of imperialism, and cast new light on contemporary politics around the historical experience of Indigenous children in settler colonies like Australia and Canada.

The Politics of Scandal in Spain

This article has a double purpose. On one hand, it briefly reviews the main political scandals in democratic Spain and tries to account for why political corruption gained a privileged position in the Spanish public agenda only during the decade of the 1990s and up to the Socialist’s electoral defeat of 1996. On the other hand, and the main focus of this article, the Spanish case is used to build a model for the analysis of scandals based on the idea that these phenomena are not automatic processes of social control but rather the result of political struggles among different social elites of which the final outcome is unpredictable.

Lift high the cross: where white supremacy and the Christian right converge

Both the Christian right and right-wing white supremacist groups aspire to overcome a culture they perceive as hostile to the white middle class, families, and heterosexuality. The family is threatened, they claim, by a secular humanist conspiracy that seeks to erase all memory of the nation’s Christian heritage by brainwashing its children through sex education, multiculturalism, and pop culture. In Lift High the Cross Ann Burlein looks at two groups that represent, in one case, the “hard” right, and in the other, the “soft” right—Pete Peters’s “Scriptures for America” and James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family”—in order to investigate the specific methods these groups rely on to appeal to their followers. Arguing that today’s right engenders its popularity not by overt bigotry or hatred but by focusing on people’s hopes for their children, Burlein finds a politics of grief at the heart of such rhetoric. While demonstrating how religious symbols, rituals, texts, and practices shape people’s memories and their investment in society, she shows how Peters and Dobson each construct countermemories for their followers that reframe their histories and identities—as well as their worlds—by reversing mainstream perspectives in ways that counter existing power relations. By employing the techniques of niche marketing, the politics of scandal, and the transformation of political issues into “gut issues” and by remasculinizing the body politic, Burlein shows, such groups are able to move people into their realm of influence without requiring them to agree with all their philosophical, doctrinal, or political positions. Lift High the Cross will appeal to students and scholars of religion, American cultural studies, women’s studies, sociology, and gay and lesbian studies, as well as to non-specialists interested in American politics and, specifically, the right.