Livin' la Vida Barroca

Thomas S. Harrington is a professor of Hispanic Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut where he teaches courses on 20th and 21st Century Spanish Cultural History, Literature and Film. His areas of research expertise include modern Iberian nationalist movements. Contemporary Catalonia, cultural theory, the epistemologies of Hispanic Studies and the history of migration between the peninsular «periphery» (Catalonia, Galicia, Portugal and the Basque Country) and the societies of the Caribbean and the Southern Cone. In recent years, he has begun, in essays such as those contained in the present volume, to apply the insights gained in the course of his work on the formation of Iberian social identities to the task of unpacking the cultural architecture of nationalist and imperialist discourses in the land of his birth.

Table of Contents
Preface
Livin’ la Vida Barroca
Who’s Gonna Tell the Kids
Liberal Boomers and Courage
Unequal Charges: When Balanced is Not Fair
Junk by Design
Georges Duhamel on the Writing of Literature (and Life?)
I’m in a Good Place
Netanyahu: the Intellectual Father of the “War on Terror”
Necessary Melancholy?
Where We Are: America the Baroque
Dignity: An Idea Gone Missing in the Land
Not So Different After All?
Controversialization: A Key to the Right’s. Continuing Domination of Public Debates
Language, “Promontory Views” and American Perceptions of the World
A Liberal Culture “Stuck to the Metaphor” of its Own Virtues
Seeing and Unseeing in Big Media
Sooner or Later Our Children Will Ask: “How Did This Happen?”
Quick! Look Over There!
On Bumper Stickers That Say “Coexist”
If Everyone Has a Price, Who Will Fight for Justice?
The Partisanship Canard
Tribalism is Dead, Long Live the Tribe
Ballots and Democracy: Big Media is Just Not that Into It
Learned Helplessness and the Imperial Condition
The Doctrine of “Reasonable Doubt”: Universal Principle or Perk of the Powerful?
Junk Food for the Mind
Preemptive Strikes of the (Pseudo) Progressive Kind
One Thing You Can’t Hide
Is the Authoritarian Inside
Uniformed Impunity: We’re Probably Closer to the Beginning than to the End
Anger and Angry People
“Keeping US Safe”: From the Task of Engaging and Managing our Own Anxieties
Orthodoxies and Adolescents
Technocrats
More Intellectual Dishonesty at the New York Times
A Better Question Might Be, “How Isn’t it Fascism?”
If the Cords of Culture are Cut, How Will We Access the Potential Sources of Our Renewal?
“Mistakes Were Made”: One-Time Object of Derision. Now a Core Template of Our Social Behaviors
Customers or Citizens?
Being (or Not) in the “Place of the Soul”
No, It Has Not “Always Been This Way”
Recognizing the Importance of Goldwater, or Learning to Analyze and Practice Progressive Politics in their Historical Dimension
“Take Responsibility for My Vote and Its Policy Consequences?
Obama’s Dog Whistle Politics (Zelig at the Top of his Game)
The Truth or the Tribe?
Israel Has Been “Singled Out” in the US for a Very Long Time
The “Powell Memo” of 1971: The Foundation of the Right’s Current Domination of US Politics
The Victory of Obama or the Definitive Triumph of the Politics of Illusion and Moral Disengagement in the United States
Is the US of Today Really Spain?