The article uses the 2010 political success of the Tea Party phenomenon as a jumping-off point to examine a number of ideological tropes and rhetorical devices in American politics. It argues that the political language of the Tea Party is not – as is often assumed – empty moralizing at the expense of intellectual depth, but rather draws on a wide variety of American political and intellectual themes and traditions. The article uses the campaign literature and polemic of key Tea (...) Party affiliates – Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell, Glenn Beck, Ron Paul – as entry points to discuss the movement’s political strategies and interpretation of the role of government, individual liberty, American exceptionalism, constitutionalism, the free market, and the common people. In placing these discussions in their historical and intellectual context, the article argues for taking the Tea Party’s political message seriously, not least as a reflection of prevalent democratic concerns and frustrations with the American political system in its current incarnation. (shrink)

This study focuses on the novels of Quicksand by Nella Larsen and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison to explore the phenomenon of poqéakh through the fictionalized lived experiences of their protagonists, Helga Crane and invisible man. Each novelist’s representation of poqéakh offers a portrait of the protagonists’ psyches. The narratives reveal an unsettling truth for the protagonists, who are members of a population often targeted, stigmatized, and fashioned or re-fashioned by Americans and various environs in American society, that they must (...) assimilate—not only their bodies, but their psyches too to fit the “white man’s pattern”. Their realities inform them that non-conformity and/or developing or utilizing their intellect is disadvantageous—perceiving is unfavorable. Each protagonist learns that she and he will not only be limited by their imaginations or abilities, but also by persons and constructs within American society keeping them witless and amenable. The environs presented in forms such as schools, jobs, even people who prepare each protagonist to accept all and any disparity, they are made to be persistently and surreptitiously instructive. As such, these environs are always educating, always molding the psyches of the protagonists to live within a frame—the construct. These ever informing boundaries thoroughly acquaint each protagonist on “how to scale down [their] desires and dreams so that they will come within reach of possibility”. Poqéakh leads Helga Crane to perceive the boundaries while it prevents the invisible man from returning to unblissful ignorance, thus, for him, providing momentary periods of lucidity. This study utilizes a qualitative research design and method, and relies on phenomenological theory to successfully analyze the novels and explicate on the representations of poqéakh. As this study will illustrate, Larsen and Ellison offer as representative via their novels two narratives of the diasporic psyche, wherein their protagonists’ experiences of poqéakh lead to some unmitigated facts and disturbing truths about their reality. (shrink)