Which is why when I talk of Obama’s memoirs, I place “Barack Obama” as literary construct in quotation marks: there is, in any verbal recounting, necessary recourse to narrative technique and tropes — so it is hardly controversial to separate Barack Obama from “Barack Obama” as he exists in words alone.
Where the interest lies is at the point of agency and authorship. For if Bill Ayers has indeed ghostwritten at least portions of Barack Obama’s memoirs, as some are alleging, then it is fair to say that the “Barack Obama” of those memoirs is more even than a construct: he is at least partially a fictional character, given that it is “his” words that ostensibly create “him” — making it follow that, if the words creating him are not his own, then “he” is really a kind of living literary portmanteau, a blend of influences, an ontological hybrid insofar as he exists publicly.
The Editors at the Poorman Institute seem to have missed it for their "Golden Winger Awards for Excellence in Wingnuttery." Is everyone asleep at the wheel?
5 comments:
who is this pasty 'intellectual'? as if georgee wasn't
'constructed'.
ayers? REALLY?
Hell, I'm just waiting for the results of the 2008 Dead Pool ... and the introduction of the 2009 version.
Barack is really whoever we want him to be. For me, a 21st century Shaft.
for republikans a BLACK whale.
It's that time of year again for ...
Your Dead Pool.
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