RES: a trip to North Korea

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Apr 24 10:10:25 PDT 2000


Charles Brown wrote:


>CB: I really would like to know the Spivak/Derrida,/Foucault/ Lacan
>term for this usage of "bizarre". It seems like some kind of
>exoticizing the Other or Orientalism. Why is it that a Korean
>personality cult is bizarre, but a British (royal family) or
>American (Reagan a movie star as president) is not "bizarre" ?

You're supplying that, not me. I think the Diana cult is bizarre. Scientology is bizarre. The Virgin Mary cult is bizarre.

Reagan's a lot more complicated than merely bizarre. There are bizarre aspects to Reaganism - e.g. why so many workers voted for him against their own material interests, or the Statue of Liberty celebration with its 400 Elvis impersonators - but on the other hand, there are non-bizarre reasons workers voted for him too (e.g., racism). And U.S. capital's support for him is not in the least bizarre.

Doug



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list