I wish I had more time to write about this. I'm reading and re-reading Derrida's Specters of Marx right now and I happened upon this silly news article. The only part that interested me was this quote from the former First Lady Nancy Reagan:
"I miss Ronnie a lot, an awful lot [...] People say it gets better. No, it does not. It sounds strange, but … I see Ronnie. At nighttime, if I wake up, I think Ronnie’s there, and I start to talk to him [...] It’s not important what I say. But the fact is, I do think he’s there. And I see him.”
This, of course, has more to do with mourning and personal memory than politics. I don't want to comment on something so personal and important as the loss of a spouse. Yet it is interesting that Nancy is thus quoted in the wake of much political strife within the Republican party. While some have called for a return to Reagan Conservatism (not least among them Mitt Romney), others have said that there is a need to bury the policies Reagan and leave his style of capitalism behind (I think it was Newt Gingrich). This is only of note because of what I am studying right now, ghosts, memory and trauma, not because I'm terribly interested in politics. Whatever the leadership of the GOP decides to do, I think we can safely play with Marx's opening statement to the Communist Manifesto and say that "A spectre is haunting America - the spectre of Reagan Conservatism"
1 comment:
It's amazing the power a ghost can have over people, even when the person is not dead (as in the years preceding Reagan's death). There's a certain aspect of celebrity of any kind that immediately makes the person--the real flesh-and-blood person--a ghost, an image, an idea. Something ephemeral locked into one position for all eternity, like Warhol's Monroes or Che Guevara t-shirts.
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