The Play of Political Culture, Emotion and Identity

Candida Yates

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137319517
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Personality in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Offering a uniquely 'psycho-cultural' take on the emotional dynamics of UK political culture this book uses theories and research in psychoanalysis, cultural and media studies and political sociology. It explores the cultural and emotional processes that shape our relationship to politics in a media age, referencing Joanna Lumley to Nigel Farage.

1

Introducing Emotion, Identity and the Play of Political Culture

Developing a psycho-cultural approach to emotion and political culture

This book explores the relationships between emotion, identity and fantasy within the mediatised landscape of contemporary political culture. Focusing mainly on the UK context, the study of these relationships takes the form of an interdisciplinary ‘psycho-cultural’ approach that uses theories and methods taken from the fields of psychosocial studies, cultural and media studies. A starting place for this book is that politics – and our engagement with it – has become increasingly emotional (Lilleker, 2012; Richards, 2007). The emotionalisation of politics can be found in different aspects of political culture, which include the field of political representation, the content of political policy and the engagement with those representations and policies within and via different aspects of the media and popular culture.

One can cite numerous images of politicians performing emotively for the camera – from Tony Blair’s speech following Princess Diana’s death in 1997, to Hillary Clinton’s tears on her 2008 election campaign, or the former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s tearful retirement speech in 2013. The UK government’s focus on notions of ‘emotional wellbeing’ and ‘happiness’ also provides an example of the way in which the language and discourses of emotion have permeated the political discourses of public life (Lennon-Patience, 2013; Richards, 2007; Rustin, 2007; Yates, 2011). As I discuss, the study of emotions in this context needs to include a focus on notions of fantasy, affect and the unconscious and the psychological defences and anxieties that are stirred up, communicated and experienced within the day-to-day mediatised contexts of political culture.

Corner and Pels (2003: 3) usefully define political culture as that which includes ‘political experience, imagination, values and dispositions’, which shape both the environment for the ‘political system’ and the ‘character of political processes and political behaviour’. The term ‘political culture’ refers not only to the official texts of government, (including, for example, public policy documents and political speeches) but also to the fluid, mediatised relationships that now exist between politics and popular culture. The latter includes the representation of politics in the press, broadcast news, television entertainment shows and social media, and also in fictional depictions of politics in films, novels and television programmes.

Political culture is also influenced by celebrity culture, the growth of social media and the marketisation of politics as a promotional activity. This book takes account of these factors shaping political culture and provides an analysis of the cultural politics of British political life by using methods of textual and contextual analysis, paying attention to both the popular and ‘official’ texts of political culture today. In focusing on the output of the UK press in print, broadcast and digital media formats in the period 1997–2015, I have identified a number of persistent themes that have emerged, and these can tell us something about the popular psycho-cultural imagination of that moment in recent history, which covers the shift from the rise of New Labour to the end of the Conservative/Liberal Coalition Government in 2015. It is interesting to think about the changing texture of politics in the period and the shifting metaphors used from ‘the eradication of left/right polarity’ (Giddens, 1998, p. 26), through to the ‘clear blue water’ differentiation of centrism politics (Addley and Woodward, 2007). More recently, in the UK as elsewhere in Europe, we have seen the emergence of a populist right-wing positioning. In the UK the UK Independence Party (UKIP) has attempted to differentiate itself from mainstream politicians who UKIP say ‘are all the same’ and as ‘bad’ as each other (Mardel, 2014).

This book, then, is about how media converges with politics and what that process signals about the public mood. Mediated examples of politics in this period can tell us something as they are symptomatic of a particular ‘a structure of feeling’ (Williams, 1977), where the (always) irrational social symbolic sphere of contemporary political culture is shaped by the practices and discourses of culture, history and politics and also by the forces of emotion and unconscious fantasy. Media coverage of politicians and political issues in real and fictional contexts can be read as being symptomatic of a public mood and that they are also linked to the fantasies that underpin shifting attitudes about culture and identity. As Braidotti (2002: 39) argues: ‘Fantasies, desires and the pursuit of pleasure play an important and constructive role in subjectivity as rational judgement and standard political action’. In a period of change, flux and uncertainty, when it is often said that politics is in disarray, it is perhaps not surprising that such themes often focus on questions of identity, cultural belonging and the fate of the self at a time of crises and uncertainty.

The emotional tone of much political culture invites a mode of analysis that is able to accommodate the often irrational and contradictory nature of popular political discourse in an era of economic crisis, flux and change. Psychoanalysis offers a perspective on such issues that can take into account this set of contradictions in a way that opens up new ways of reflecting on and thinking them through. From Freud onwards, there has been a history of applying psychoanalytic concepts to socio-political themes and events (see Auestad, 2014; Adorno and Horkheimer, 1976; Clarke et al., 2006; Freud, 1921, 1930; Glynos and Stavrakas, 2010; Rustin, 2001; Samuels, 2001, 1993; Žižek, 2014). Yet as Bainbridge and Yates (2012, 2014) have discussed, albeit with some notable exceptions (see, for example, Layton, 2004, 2010, 2011; Richards, 2007; and Rustin, 1991), the application of object relations psychoanalysis has been used less within the field of politics, media and cultural studies, which is often sceptical of the ‘universalising claims’ of psychoanalytic thinking. However, I want to insist upon the usefulness of a psychoanalytic framework in helping us to understand the complexities of cultural experience and its ongoing role in shaping the psychological and affective processes of subjectivity. I apply an object relations approach because of its focus on the relational dimensions of subjectivity. From an object relations perspective, the experience of selfhood and identity is an ongoing, formative process that is bound up with relations to real and imagined objects of the mind and the social world (Bainbridge and Yates, 2014).

My approach is therefore one that uses psychoanalytic theories of the unconscious, affect, identification and play, to explore emotion and its symbolisation in culture at any one time. Alongside object relations theory, the book also deploys psychoanalytic theories of gender and sexual difference to acknowledge the significance of both oedipal and pre-oedipal fantasy in the shaping of images and processes of identification within political culture today. The discussions thus combine an understanding of unconscious processes – including the role of fantasy, desire and the mobilisation of unconscious defences, with an awareness of the historical and cultural context in which those processes take place. From this ‘psycho-cultural’ perspective then (Bainbridge and Yates, 2014, 2012), the shaping of identity goes beyond the analysis of cultural and social factors, as instead, affective identities are mutually constituted and transformed by the ongoing interaction of psyche, culture and society.

As discussed elsewhere (Bainbridge and Yates, 2012, 2014), the psycho-cultural methodology deployed here has emerged partly from the field of British Psychosocial Studies and my work is influenced in particular by the psychosocial studies approach developed at the University of East London.¹ That work often deploys sociology and object relations psychoanalysis to explore questions of subjectivity, politics and society and it tends to focus on social, rather than cultural concerns. Whilst the approach taken in this book draws strongly on that psychosocial studies tradition – especially its insights regarding the inter-relationship between social and psychological experience, it also deploys a cultural focus that is shaped by media and cultural studies, thus combining aspects of both the humanities and the social sciences research traditions.

The aim of this opening chapter is to orientate the reader by defining some of the key concepts, themes and ideas which inform that psycho-cultural approach, to provide some theoretical and historical context for the analysis of the complex relationships between politics, emotion and the shaping of identities today.

Consuming politics as popular culture

There is now a vast body of scholarly research on the topic of ‘political communication’ and its influence in shaping voter preference and our engagement with politics (see, for example, Negrine and Stanyer, 2008; Sanders, 2009; Wolfsfeld, 2011). Yet as I have indicated, the term ‘political culture’ is preferred here to that of ‘political communication’, as the meaning of the latter is often too narrow to encompass the many areas within popular culture and the media, where political engagement now takes place (Corner and Pels, 2003; Couldry et al., 2010; Fielding, 2014; Richards, 2007; Savigny, 2016). From radio phone-ins to soap opera and comedy satires, the notion of what ‘constitutes politics’ now extends beyond the traditional communication channels of political engagement to the mediatised spaces of popular culture (Couldry et al., 2010). The term ‘popular culture’ is notoriously hard to define, and its use depends on the context in which it is being used (Storey, 2014). Following in the tradition of cultural studies scholars – and starting with Raymond Williams’ well-known definition, ‘culture’ can be defined in its broadest sense to mean ‘a way of life’ (Williams, 1983).² In the past, popular culture has been defined in terms of its difference from ‘high’ culture, yet today, the distinction between high and low culture has become increasing blurred. The same can be said about the blurring of boundaries between ‘official’ versus ‘popular culture’ where, in the context of political culture, politicians market themselves or deride the opposition by using populist social networking techniques.

This process was evident in the 2010 UK general election digital poster campaign, in which playful references to popular culture were used to engage voters, and where the lines between the methods of ‘official’ political communication and those of popular culture were unclear (Dermody and Hanmer-Lloyd, 2011).³ All the political parties used these posters in their campaigns and the ‘Ashes to Ashes’ poster campaign exemplifies this form of mediatised populist politics.⁴ Following a competition organised by New Labour’s advertising company, Saatchi and Saatchi, the winner created the ‘Ashes to Ashes’ poster, which depicted the Tory leader David Cameron as the television detective, ‘Gene Hunt’, sitting on his 1980s red Audi, wearing snakeskin boots, with the caption: ‘Don’t let him take Britain back to the 1980s’ (Nikkaha, 2010).⁵ However, during the 2010 election campaign, this technique was speedily appropriated by the Conservative party in a move, presented as a playful riposte, when they produced their own digital poster, which used the same image, but with the caption: ‘Fire up the Quattro it’s time for a change’.⁶

The seemly authentic, ‘blokey’ wit of this image and its message appropriated the playful, knowing meme-loving culture of the social networking generation, reflecting Castell’s vision of the ‘network society’ (2009) with its horizontal structures of communication. The posters used a style, which in contrast to more traditional modes of political communication, appeared not to talk down to voters, but instead, seemed to share the joke with them; one which linked David Cameron to 1980s Thatcherite politics as a kind of nostalgic reference point. Political dialogue is presented here as ‘banter’, and as I discuss in this book, the laddish connotations of that particular campaign reflect the tone of the male dominated UK political scene more generally, where women are marginalised and where femininity continues to be represented mainly in middle class, domestic images of motherhood, as in the UK online network ‘Mumsnet’,⁷ or as the wives of male politicians. The nostalgic aspects of the poster’s message connotes a kind of ‘back to the future’ dimension to political life which not only captures reactionary sexual politics, but also looks back to an era in the 1980s, when in the UK, the entrepreneurial values of neoliberalism were established and reflected though comedy sitcom characters such as ‘Del Boy’, from the BBC television series Only Fools and Horses (1981–2003). Thus, in 2010, the poster not only looked back, but it also anticipated the culture of the present, which has since been reinforced by the material realities of austerity culture and the lived experience of loss and hardship that has occurred as a consequence.

The term ‘austerity’ has economic, ideological and cultural meanings that resonate within the contemporary political culture and its affective landscape.⁸ The representation of emotions such as sadness and loss, occupy a key place in contemporary advertising imagery (Powell, 2011) and as a product of promotional culture, the poster campaign carries with it a desire to look back, as a means of managing the fears about the losses of the present. As I discuss in Chapter 6, the desire to stage a return to the past as a way of managing anxieties in the present is a recurrent theme of contemporary politics, and the current popularity of parties such as UKIP, which is largely premised upon a desire to return to the values of an earlier era, reflects that mood. UKIP does not employ sophisticated communication strategies, but instead has, at least in the period up until the UK 2015 General Election, relied upon the charismatic persona of its leader, Nigel Farage, to get its populist message of anti-immigration across on television, radio and social media. UKIP’s reliance on the celebrity of Farage as its leader throughout that period, reflects the promotional turn in politics where the style and personality of politicians is now key to ‘selling’ the message of a particular political party and its brand.

Popular culture is closely bound up with consumer culture (Storey, 2014) and the consumption of politics is now big business (Lilleker et al., 2006; Powell, 2013). The marketing of politics takes place at a number of levels, and as with Farage, the marketing of politicians as brands provides an obvious example of this process at work. The promotion of political biographies, memoirs and diaries represents an extension of this phenomenon where, as in Tony Blair’s (2011) biography, the ‘journey’ of the politicians is documented, reflecting the emotive narrative turn in political culture more widely. Indeed, as with the memoirs of ex-New Labour politicians Jack Straw (2013) or Alan Johnson (2014), it is the ‘moving’ and ‘revealing’ emotional content that is seen as being significant and interesting, rather than any political insights that they might hold.⁹ The consumption of politics as entertainment through television shows such as Have I Got News for You (1990–, BBC1), or the weekly radio show The News Quiz (1977–, BBC Radio 4), or the television series The Thick of It (2005–2009, BBC4 and 2009–2012, BBC2), is also widespread and is indicative perhaps, of growing cynicism about political life.¹⁰ Further examples of the consumption of politics as entertainment can be found in the television show and spoof documentary about Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson, When Boris Met Dave (2009, Channel 4), and also in films that depict UK prime ministers, such as Love Actually (2003) or trade union battles (albeit in films from very different perspectives), including Made in Dagenham (2010), Billy Elliott (2000) and Pride (2014).

Politics now takes place in a consumer culture, where the values of advertising and promotion are brought to the fore (Banet-Weiser, 2012; Powell, 2013; Wernick, 1991). Consumerism is not governed by rational decision-making, but rather, it is shaped by the irrational vicissitudes of desire and identification – as in the development of celebrity politics, where like other forms of consumption, voters’ responses are not always governed by rationality, but rather by the processes of fantasy, emotion and identification. This is not to say that voters are manipulated and brainwashed victims of false consciousness, but rather that the engagement with politics is also bound up with the emotional pleasures of what Colin Campbell (1989) calls ‘illusory’ hedonism.

The links between celebrity culture and politics have been explored at length by researchers in psychosocial and cultural studies (Evans, 2009; Evans and Hesmondhalgh, 2005; Farrell, 2012; Nunn and Biressi, 2010; Turner, 2004). At a time when the boundaries between political parties in Western democratic systems have become increasingly indistinct, the branding of politicians through the politics of ‘personality’ and celebrity has become significant as a means of marking out and promoting political parties to voters, whose loyalties and political identifications have also become more fluid than previously. Since 2005 there have been numerous world leaders, from Silvio Berlusconi to Sarah Palin and Barack Obama, who in different ways, exemplify the trend of celebrity politics. Using celebrities to enhance the reputation of politicians is an established practice and one can cite numerous examples of this in the 20th century, from J.F. Kennedy’s association with Marilyn Monroe to Harold Wilson’s courting of The Beatles. In the US, Arnold Schwarzenegger and, before him, Ronald Reagan used their prior film star celebrity status to enhance their performance as candidates standing for and entering political office. Today, in a neat reversal of fortune, UK politicians can perform in different entertainment settings because of their existing status as celebrity politicians. Examples of this development include walk-on cameos in television dramas, as in Boris Johnson’s performance as himself in East Enders (BBC1, 2010), or comedy sketch shows, such as Tony Blair’s comedy performance as himself with comedienne Catherine Tate, as part of Red Nose Day (2007, BBC1), or reality shows, as in the UK Respect Party Member of Parliament, George Galloway’s performance on Celebrity Big Brother (Channel 4, 2006); or Conservative Member of Parliament, Nadine Dorries’s performance on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here (ITV, 2012) and more recently, ex-Conservative Member of Parliament, Edwina Curry (ITV, 2014). Boris Johnson, exemplifies the celebrity turn in politics. His day-to-day duties as mayor are continually turned into photo opportunities and his role as a broadcaster and television personality played a key role in the 2009 London mayoral election campaign (Yates, 2014a).

The UK New Labour government (1997–201...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introducing Emotion, Identity and the Play of Political Culture
• 2. Spinning the Unconscious and the Play of Flirtation in Political Culture
• 3. The Dilemmas of Postfeminism and the Fantasies of Political Culture
• 4. Political Culture and the Desire for Emotional Wellbeing
• 5. The Absent Parent in Political Culture
• 6. Moving Forward to the Past: Fantasies of Nation within UK Political Culture
• 7. Reflections on the Psycho-Cultural Dynamics of Political Culture
• Notes
• References
• Index