Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest PDF
Preview Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest
Our Monica, Ourselves SEXUAL CULTURES: New Directions from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies General Editors: José Esteban Muñoz and Ann Pellegrini Times Square Red, Times Square Blue Samuel R. Delany Private Affairs Critical Ventures in the Culture of Social Relations Phillip Brian Harper In Your Face 9 Sexual Studies Mandy Merck Tropics of Desire Interventions from Queer Latino America José Quiroga Murdering Masculinities Fantasies of Gender and Violence in the American Crime Novel Greg Forter Our Monica, Ourselves The Clinton Affair and the National Interest Edited by Lauren Berlant and Lisa Duggan Our Monica, Ourselves The Clinton Affair and the National Interest Edited by LAUREN BERLANT AND LISA DUGGAN a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London © 2001 by New York University All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Our Monica, ourselves : the Clinton affair and the national interest / edited by Lauren Berlant and Lisa Duggan. p. cm. — (Sexual cultures) ISBN 0-8147-9865-9 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8147-9864-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Clinton, Bill, 1946– —Sexual behavior. 2. Clinton, Bill, 1946– — Impeachment. 3. Lewinsky, Monica S. (Monica Samille), 1973– 4. Political culture—United States. 5. Culture conflict—United States. 6. Sex— Social aspects—United States. 7. Sexual ethics—United States. 8. United States—Social conditions—1980– 9. United States—Politics and government— 1993– 10. United States—Moral conditions. I. Berlant, Lauren Gail, 1957– II. Duggan, Lisa, 1954– III. Title. IV. Series. E886.2 .O96 2001 973.929'092—dc21 00-012212 New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Lauren Berlant and Lisa Duggan PART 1: DEMOCRACY AND PRESIDENTIALISM 1 The Culture Wars of the 1960s and the Assault on the Presidency: The Meaning of the Clinton Impeachment 9 Eli Zaretsky 2 The Symbolics of Presidentialism: Sex and Democratic Identification 34 Dana D. Nelson and Tyler Curtain PART 2: BODILY IMAGINARIES AND SEXUAL PRACTICES 3 The Face That Launched a Thousand Jokes 55 Laura Kipnis 4 It’s Not about Sex 73 James R. Kincaid 5 The Door Ajar: The Erotics of Hypocrisy in the White House Scandal 86 Simone Weil Davis 6 Sex of a Kind: On Graphic Language and the Modesty of Television News 102 Sasha Torres 7 The First Penis Impeached 116 Toby Miller PART 3: FANTASIES OF RACE, CLASS, AND ETHNICITY 8 The Return of the Oppressed 137 Frederick C. Moten with B Jenkins v CONTENTS 9 Trashing the Presidency: Race, Class, and the Clinton/Lewinsky Affair 156 Micki McElya 10 Moniker 175 Marjorie Garber 11 Monica Dreyfus 203 Tomasz Kitlinski, Pawel Leszkowicz, and Joe Lockard PART 4: FEMINISM AND SEXUAL POLITICS 12 The President’s Penis: Entertaining Sex and Power 225 Catharine Lumby 13 ’Tis Pity He’s a Whore 237 Ellen Willis 14 Loose Lips 246 Jane Gallop with Lauren Berlant 15 Sexuality’s Archive: The Evidence of the Starr Report 268 Ann Cvetkovich PART 5: ETHICS AND MORALITY 16 Sex and Civility 285 Eric O. Clarke 17 “He Has Wronged America and Women”: Clinton’s Sexual Conservatism 291 Janet R. Jakobsen 18 Sexual Risk Management in the Clinton White House 315 Anna Marie Smith Contributors 337 vi Acknowledgments We would like to thank Eva Pendleton, Alison Redick, and Micol Seigel for re- search assistance, Sexual Cultures series editors José Muñoz and Ann Pellegrini for their enthusiastic encouragement, and Eric Zinner and Cecilia Feilla of New York University Press for technical support and editorial savvy. vii Introduction Lauren Berlant and Lisa Duggan It was a moment of astounding incoherence. The Clinton affair—the sex, the lying, the investigation, the impeachment—was a historic public event, yet cen- tral to it was a debate about whether it was worthy of attention. Had politics and prurience become identical, and whose fault was that? All parties—the press, the public, the political parties, the president and his prosecutors—hurled charges that the others were up to their necks in corruption. People scurried to find the moral high ground, but then again it seemed that we were drowning in moral high grounds, too. In the wake of the deluge of publicity and contradictory eval- uation produced by the Clinton/Lewinsky affair and its aftermath, Our Monica, Ourselvesseeks a medium-range perspective—offering reflective, after-the-fact as- sessments by politically progressive journalists, scholars, and activists addressed to the questions: How does the intersection of sex and politics shape U.S. public cul- ture? What can the alternating waves of public obsession, revulsion, and boredom generated by this scandal of sex and justice tell us about the national interest? In another time, the sexual scandal in the political sphere that organizes this book might have taken on a mythic aura. “Did she put on his knowledge with his power/Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?” asked Yeats about Leda and 1
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