The politics of
by Anders Hove

Here's a handy column idea: pick a noun, preferably one signifying a human emotion (e.g. grief, horror, infatuation, boredom), or maybe a current trend (globalization, devolution, digitization). Now, stick the words "the politics of" out in front. Ta-dah! Instant acceptance on the Op-ed page of the flagship news daily of your choice.

Want to make it into a book? Go ahead! If it's got "the politics of" in it, it's ready for publication. See if you can pick the real book titles out of the following list:

The Politics of Meaning, The Politics of Acid Pollution, The Politics of Purity, The Politics of Community Policing, The Politics of Hate, The Politics of Culture, The Politics of Age Difference, The Politics of Culture and Identity, The Politics of Culture, Gender, Aging, Social Stratification, Inequality, and Violence in the Pacific.

At this point, I'm not prepared to speculate as to the exact date when "the politics of" gained official status as a cultural phenomenon. A glance at the above list does show the phrase has been thoroughly adopted by all segments of literary and journalistic society.

First, you have the intellectuals and academics (who probably started the thing) using the phrase as a catch-all title for conferences, symposiums, and books about intellectual movements ranging from feminism to white backlash. A search on "the politics of community" turns up a clutch of working papers, conferences, and articles - plus a couple of Arian hate sites.

Then you have the journalists, using "the politics of" as a cute prelude to discussions of whatever happens to be on their minds at the moment. Into this seething stew I'll toss the book authors - be they desperate or merely unoriginal - who use "the politics of" as a universal preface for their magnum opi: The Politics of Water, The Politics of Bilingual Education, The Politics of Rage (about George Wallace), The Politics of Disappointment (about recent U.S. presidential elections).

Inevitably, there come those who wish to use "the politics of" as a handy way to grind an axe against whatever they think "politics" are "of" these days. In this genre are The Politics of Righteousness, and The Politics of Faith and Scepticism, The Politics of Pornography.

And finally, almost unobtrusively, there are those unfortunate waifs who have coopted the phrase as a way to legitimize their own quasi-political efforts. This group ranges from folks who care a lot about cancer (Politics of Grief, The Politics of Cancer), to those who just don't care a lot about much of anything -- the punk movement, in case you missed --> -- it, was all about The Politics of Boredom. Apparently the academics' use of the phrase in place of a sneer was lost on Rolling Stone when it went with The Politics of Pot.

The wonderful thing about "the politics of" is its versatility: it has no content. For example, there seems to be some confusion about whether "the politics of terror" refers to the conspiracy theory about the U.S. government's role in the Oklahoma City bombing, corruption in Indonesian politics, or Saddam Hussein. And in all probability that's only the tip of the "politics of terror" iceberg.

While engaging in the all-encompassing web search which produced this column, I couldn't help trying to guess what each "politics of" would be about as I typed phrase upon phrase into AltaVista. For example, I was quite sure "the politics of dissent" had a lot to do with Noam Chomsky. Wrong. I must have been thinking of Toronto University Professor Norman Ingram, who wrote of pacifism in France, 1919-1939. Possibly I will have to admit forgetting all about Laura Woliver's seminal work on The Politics of Grass-Roots Dissent. There goes my status as a left intellectual.

Really, what a pity it is that the politics of simple title phrasing wasn't loosed upon the world a few centuries before our time. Think of the literary wonders we've missed out on. How much more highly would we view Marx if he'd written of The Politics of Proletarian Revolt instead of the Communist Manifesto; Money, Capitalism, and The Politics of Greed, instead of just Capital? And our own political heritage could use a little spruicing up: how about The Politics of Life, Liberty, and Happiness as a dandy subtitle for that otherwise staid Declaration? The Gettysburg Address - contemporaneously billed as "dedicatory remarks by the President of the United States" - would have gone over better as The Politics of Government Of-By-And-For the People. But newspaper critics might have panned Abe's effort as The Politics of Cemetery Dedication.

And what if Moses had known about The Politics of Slavery, Liberationist Movements, and Trans-Arabian Migratory Flows? Clumsy words like "exodus" would hardly be a part of our lingia-franca. But let's postpone our effort to tease out the relationship between the Politics of Vocabulary and the Politics of Rape. I need to catch up on some Politics of Sleep. If you'll excuse me.