Ronald Reagan

When investigating the evolution of the FDA that led it to an era of regulatory capture by pharmaceutical companies, the role of Reagan’s neoliberalism and his administration is clear and undeniable.
To fully understand the scope of the capture of the agency, we will investigate the roles of the individual commissioners, the financial relationships between the industry and the representatives in Congress and the FDA who serve with industry sympathies, and the agency scandals such as the “Pay to Play” meetings and the controversial use of “trade secrets” laws. After evaluating the critical moments of deregulation, public opinion shifts, and policy construction it is apparent that the era of New Right conservatism during the Reagan era built the foundation that led to the regulatory capture of the Food and Drug Administration.

Paper given at the HOTCUS Winter Symposium at the British Library's Eccles Centre for American Studies:

The “Second Cold War” that followed the breakdown of US-Soviet detente in the latter half of the 1970s led to a renewed cultural preoccupation with a potential nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union. Furthermore, advances in space exploration, computer and laser technology provided the backdrop for proponents of ballistic missile defence to outline radical new scenarios by which the nuclear stalemate might be transcended, scenarios which would coalesce around Reagan’s “Strategic Defense Initiative” announced in 1983. This paper analyses the visions of space warfare that suffuse military and cultural discourse during this period. Using Reagan administration documents and representative examples of the genre, it will explore how futuristic conflict scenarios of the US and USSR battling over the heavens were expressed in both government propaganda and the increasingly popular “techno-thriller” –best-sellers that combined traditional masculine adventure literature with an obsession with technical and engineering minutiae and were often decidedly conservative in terms of politics.

One of Reagan's well known talents was his ability to act. His speech about the Challenger Disaster was so moving because he was able to act in different roles throughout the speech in order to properly address the different parts of his grieving audience. To analyze Reagan’s Challenger Address, I  use the “Texture of Texts” theory by Vernon K. Robbins to show exactly how Reagan achieves his goal to console the nation.

The year 1989 saw revolutions across Central and Eastern Europe that led to the collapse of communist states that had been part of the Soviet Union bloc.  These remarkable revolutions were mostly peaceful, led by ordinary citizens and students and were successful largely due to the refusal of Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to intervene and stop them.  Twenty-five years after the beginning of the end of communism in Europe and Russia, new insights and sources continue to be updated and published.  Focusing on East Germany and Czechoslovakia, one can see many similarities but also a few differences in their respective revolutions.  East Germany got more attention since it involved the fall of the Berlin Wall, the iconic symbol of the Cold War for twenty-eight years.  Also in East Germany you did not see the rise of one leader opposed to the state, whereas in Czechoslovakia, Václav Havel became the leader of the revolution and president of the new government.  Both revolutions involved peaceful protests and calls for change by citizens.  These 1989 Revolutions were significant for ending communism, ushering in democracy and capitalism and leading to new governments and societies across Central and Eastern Europe.

The American withdrawal from Iraq leaves in place a Sunni insurgency against an American-supported, corrupt Shi’ite prime minister, Nouri Kamal al-Maliki, who has a shaky alliance with the Kurds. On June 10, 2014, the Sunni fundamentalist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which originated as Al Qaeda in Iraq, with the help of Sunni insurgents from the current civil in Syria, took control of the oil-rich city of Mosul on the Tigris River in northern Iraq. They then proceeded south along the river valley, capturing Tikrit on June 11th. The Iraqi army refused to fight and tore off their uniforms. An estimated 500,000 residents of Mosul, about 25 percent of its population, fled either to nearby villages, Baghdad, or the autonomous Kurdish region. However, Sunni residents of the region are welcoming the insurgents, despite summary executions of supporters of the government. Meanwhile, Kurdish forces have seized control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk to in the Kurdish autonomous region.  Under pressure from the Republican-dominated House of Representatives “raising the bloody shirt” that 4,000 American troops died in Iraq, President Obama is considering measures short of “boots-on-the-ground” to prop up the Maliki government. This civil war may well result in the division of the country into three, a result which might better be resolved by a UN supervised plebiscite. After all, it is the lack of resolution of these issues of self-determination that fuels the fire of Islamic revitalization movements that resort to the tactic of terrorism.

The Obama Doctrine of May 2014 asserts that the terrorism is “the most direct threat to America, at home and abroad.”  Every president from Ronald Reagan to Obama has bought into the premise that we are engaged in a War on Terror. But terrorism is not an enemy, it is a tactic used in asymmetrical warfare. The modern usage of the notion of a War on Terror as applied to Islamic fundamentalists was originated by Benjamin Netanyahu and endorsed by George P. Shultz, the former president of the international construction firm Bechtel, who became Reagan’s secretary of state and a foreign policy advisor along with Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Condoleezza Rice in George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential election. What is not well-known is that Netanyahu’s parents were supporters of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the radical right-wing founder of the Zionist terrorist group known as the Irgun, and Menachem Begin, later prime minister of Israel, succeeded Jabotinsky as leader of the Irgun and ordered the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946. (See, Chapter Twenty-One—Partitioning the Holy Land)

The War on Terrorism has put the United States on the wrong side of self-determination in various parts of the world--with the Russians against the Chechen and Dagestanis in the Caucausus, with the Chinese against the Uighurs in central Asia, and with the Israelis against the Palestinians in the Middle East. In fact, most of these Muslim groups see the continued occupation by Israel of the West Bank and Jerusalem and our unconditional backing for Israel as the reason we are viewed as their enemy. What the Obama Doctrine fails to understand is that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not just an issue of Israel’s national security, but since September 11, 2001, our national security as well. The argument for a refuge for Jews has its roots in the anti-Semitism hidden in the New Testament (See, Chapter Eleven—The Blood Libel and the Wandering Jew) and the Koran and the Hadith (the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) (See, Chapter Sixteen—Mapping and Remapping the Arab World-Part 1, Mapping), but the notion that the Holy Land belongs to one people and one religion has its roots not so hidden in the Old Testament (See, Chapter Seventeen—The Chosen People and the Promised Land). History has shown that the so-called Two-State Solution will not work in the long run. It didn’t work with East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), West Pakistan, and India, nor with East and West Germany, nor with North and South Korea. Nor do the internationalization or division of Jerusalem, just as such measures didn’t work in Berlin or Istanbul. Ultimately, Israel must become a single, secular state in which both Palestinians and Jews enjoy equal citizenship. This might take a generation to achieve, after a temporary partition into two states, as originally recommended by the United Nations. After the horrific attack on New York’s World Trade Center in September 2011, the settlement of the Israeli Palestinian conflict is not a matter solely of the security of Israeli, it has become a threat to the security of the United States.

Since World War Two we have allowed ideology trump self-determination, first with the opposition to Nazism over the reunification of German-speaking peoples after World War One, second with anti-Communism over national liberation in Vietnam and the Middle East after World War Two, and finally in our War on Terrorism over the arbitrary dividing of peoples (such as the Sunni, the Shi’a, the Kurds, the Palestinians) by the Russian, British, and French empires. In each case, extremists have usurped the principle of self-determination for their own ends .

Thus, we have found ourselves  abandoning the anti-colonial principle embraced by Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and instead we have become defenders of the status quo established by the victors of World War Two. Unfortunately, we have allowed the status quo to become the standard of defining aggression in international institutions such as the United Nations, and allowed the victorious powers (the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China) of World War Two to veto measures that upset the arbitrary decisions they made after the war. While we as a nation have not always lived up to our ideals, now more than ever we need to follow Abraham Lincoln’s advice to listen to the Better Angels of Our Nature.

In December 1979, Soviet troops entered the small, poor, landlocked, Islamic nation of Afghanistan, assassinated the communist president, Hafizullah Amin, and installed a more compliant Afghan leader. For almost ten years, Soviet troops remained entrenched in Afghanistan before finally withdrawing in February 1989. During this period, the United States undertook a covert program to assist the anti-communist Afghan insurgents—the mujahideen—to resist the Soviet occupation. Beginning with President Jimmy Carter’s small-scale authorization in July 1979, the secret war became the largest in history under President Ronald Reagan, running up to $700 million per year. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) acted as the war’s quartermaster, arranging supplies of weapons for the mujahideen, which were funneled through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), in coordination with Saudi Arabia, China, Egypt, and others. No Americans were directly involved in the fighting, and t...

Written in 1981 by the late Robert Keleher of the St. Louis Fed (after some discussion with Reynolds), this was one of the earliest surveys of the evidence then available to support the hypothesis that macroeconomic incentives from marginal tax rates have frequently had a significant impact on macroeconomic results --notably the pace of economic growth within countries (time series) and between countries and states (in cross-section comparisons).

Este trabalho se intitula A revista Veja e o bloco soviético - do Império do Mal ao fracasso do comunismo: 1985-1991, por cobrir o período cronológico recortado de suas páginas e por identificar o percurso que o anticomunismo declarado por seu editorial traçou dentro desse mesmo espaço de tempo. A União Soviética e seus satélites europeus orientais representavam uma poderosa ameaça. Uma superpotência militar agressiva e expansionista, apoiada em uma base material que não poderia ser considerada a de uma superpotência econômica, uma vez que não se destacava decididamente das da Europa Ocidental e Japão. Mas que ainda assim era a segunda economia do mundo. Ao fim do período essa ameaça não era mais perceptível. Construiu-se o discurso de que o comunismo foi um fracasso político, econômico e social desde seus primórdios. O que contrariava suas próprias afirmações de seis anos atrás, rapidamente apagadas da memória. Do auge territorial do sistema do socialismo real e das nações de orientação socialista (provavelmente 1983 e a crise em Granada) ao colapso do próprio conceito político de Europa Oriental e de Segundo Mundo, oito anos depois, o anticomunismo e a imagem feita por este da experiência socialista, passou por uma revisão total, da qual Veja é testemunha engajada. Essas alterações discursivas, se orientadas e inspiradas por políticas externas e intelectuais em boa medida estrangeiros, possuíam como alvo a formação de opinião dos grupos leitores cativos da revista, e na formação de uma teia de argumentos e imagens discursivas que poderiam ser facilmente replicados, no rádio, telejornal, jornal impresso e outras revistas, alimentando um extrato comum de repúdio à União Soviética e a todo adversário político e econômico interno que pudesse ser associado de alguma forma – mesmo a mais enganosa – aos interesses, métodos ou princípios pertencentes (ao menos no imaginário anticomunista) ao universo dos regimes socialistas. Aqui tentamos traçar essa mudança discursiva e como ela era objeto de uma tentativa de enquadramento na situação político-econômica no Brasil.

The article (p. 24 - p. 30) deals with the causes and effects of US sanctions towards Russian
fuel and energy sector. It goes back to Ronald Reagan times and the Siberia-to-Europe
Gas Pipeline project, which has been crumbed and harmed Europe and USSR economy.
The article covers different points of view in the United States and gives prognosis on
the outcome of today sanction crises in accordance with the current energy market
situation.
Keywords: sanctions, fuel and energy sector, Russia, USA, Siberia-to-Europe
Gas Pipeline project, Europe, oil, Ronald Reagan, "dual use" items, transnational
corporations

A Review of Sebastian Mallaby’s Life of Alan Greenspan. Greenspan’s Chief contribution to US economic understanding occurred before he was Chairman of the US Federal Reserve: Greenspan identified the financial services as part of the economy. That increased the size of the economy as understood.

Resumen: La trilogía original de Rambo muestra una clara finalidad propagandística, marcada por su afinidad con la política estatal estadounidense o, más específicamente, con la línea seguida por el Presidente Ronald Reagan. Estas tres películas, con todas sus semejanzas y diferencias, exhiben una gran unidad y reflejan una tendencia en la sociedad estadounidense o, al menos, en la gestión política del país a partir de la llegada de Reagan.

Palabras clave: Rambo, cine, propaganda, Ronald Reagan, guerra, comunicación, persuasión.

Abstract: Rambo's original trilogy has a clear propagandistic purpose, with an affinity with American politics or, more specifically, with the line followed by President Ronald Reagan. With their similarities and differences, the three movies show a great unity and reflect a tendency in American society or, at least, in Reagan’s political administration.

Keywords: Rambo, cinema, propaganda, Ronald Reagan, war, communication, persuasion.

La Reaganomics ha cambiato profondamente gli USA e la loro economia negli Anni Ottanta. Sotto le spinte concomitanti esercitate dalla manovra della Fed, dalla deregulation e dal colossale piano di riarmo contestuale alla Sdi, gli Usa furono quindi investiti da un vero e proprio processo di riorganizzazione socio-economica che dall’ambito strettamente nazionale si estese ben presto all’intero “campo capitalista”. Mentre il risparmio mondiale confluiva verso gli Stati Uniti in conseguenza dell’innalzamento forsennato del tasso di interesse, lo smantellamento dell’intelaiatura normativa che disciplinava l’attività di Wall Street accelerava lo spostamento dell’asse dell’economia nazionale verso il settore dei servizi e schiudeva le porte a nuove tecniche di ingegneria finanziaria capaci di trasformare provvisoriamente debiti permanenti in una notevolissima fonte di lucro per l’intero sistema bancario.

« La France, maîtresse de maison »: cette expression, tirée d’un vade mecum du ministère des Affaires étrangères, résume la tradition d’accueillir avec attention sur le territoire national les dirigeants étrangers pour quelques jours. Généralisées à partir de la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle, ces visites d’État, au sommet du protocole diplomatique, imposent – entre les entretiens bilatéraux, les dîners officiels, les discours et les visites culturelles – que la République assure le logement de ses hôtes dans des résidences alliant prestige, sécurité et confort. À partir de 1959, par décision du général de Gaulle, ce rôle est dévolu au Grand Trianon. Si la renaissance du palais de marbre rose dans les années 1960 est bien connue – notamment grâce à l’ouverture en 1999 par décision de Jacques Chirac de l’aile de Trianon-sous-Bois, autrefois attribuée à la présidence de la République, et à l’exposition « Un président chez le Roi » en 2016 – les aménagements réalisés dans l’aile sud afin de recevoir les chefs d’État n’avaient, jusqu’à présent, jamais été remis en lumière .

From the Ogaden War to the Black Hawk Down incident, the Horn of Africa was a theatre of events with far-reaching international consequences. This paper argues that the distinctive process leading to the end of the bipolar conflict in the Horn is crucial to understanding the role of this region both during and after the Cold War. Through an extensive analysis of the period 1985-1991, this article explains why only a few years after the ‘burial’ of SALT II in the sands of the Ogaden, the superpowers withdrew from the region which had been the symbol of the failure of détente. Similarly, an analysis of the end of the Cold War is paramount to understanding why, after the break-up of the USSR, the Horn of Africa hosted one of the most tragic episodes of post-Cold War US foreign policy.

Contracting and possibly folding in the late 1970s, the global success of the NBA in the 1980s and 1990s is often attributed to the charismatic personalities and talents of its players, but the NBA’s resurgence was actually the result of successful managerial strategies that expunged the historical racial connotations that made white viewers uncomfortable with African Americans -- violence, drug abuse, and union activity (greed) - strategies that dovetailed with Reaganism’s policy of colorblindness. Although the NBA continues to employ a majority of black players, a focus on the ‘dark ages’ of 1976-1979, and the ensuing transformation, illuminates the continuing racial politics between black athletes and the league's white fans.

Reagan, Thatcher, Mitterrand, Kohl, Clinton, Blair, Schröder, Berlusconi, Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy, Merkel, Renzi: nelle parabole di questi leader, accomunati dalla pretesa di rappresentare il nuovo e il cambiamento, si può cogliere il ruolo cruciale che gioca la narrazione nei sistemi politici. Attingendo alle scienze sociali, alla psicologia e alle neuroscienze, il libro illustra i meccanismi che rendono efficace lo storytelling per creare emozioni, identificazione e coinvolgimento con il leader narratore. Uno storytelling che è collocato all’interno dell’impetuoso sviluppo della comunicazione e del marketing politici degli ultimi decenni. Quei tredici casi ci aiutano a decifrare l’attualità: i profili e le narrazioni di Trump, Salvini e Macron appaiono come lo stadio avanzato dell’impoverimento del discorso politico, della spettacolarizzazione e della logica mediatica; nella Brexit vediamo l’impasse a cui tutto ciò può portare; nel cancellierato di Merkel il suggerimento di una via alternativa.

American prevailing perceptions of the Cold War serve current US national foreign policy process goals that emphasize the expansion of US global influence. The prevailing view in the American polity remains that the Soviet Union was an aggressive, imperialist threat that the US defeated through its containment strategy. The validity of this ultimately self-serving assumption requires critique because Communist state postwar foreign and public policy behavior patterns did not conform with this prevailing position. Failure of the academy generally to predict the remarkably peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union is further evidence that this politically prevailing viewpoint was fundamentally flawed. Current dissent is in effect tied to the New Left that emerged partly as a critique to Cold War assumptions that produced the Vietnam debacle. This article analyzes the political interests that support the prevailing belief that the US nevertheless won the Cold War despite this left dissent. These interests overwhelm current critique of US global dominance that continues to rely on Cold War-era formulated hard power containment prescriptions. By accepting the validity of this assumption that the US won the Cold War, the academy weakens its ability to critique US foreign policy behavior in the so-called war on terror.

The U.S. immigration detention center is both a transnational space and a foreign policy microcosm. Its detainees reside physically within the nation yet legally outside, while its walls, fences, and doors clearly demarcate those bodies that do not belong to the nation from those that do. The detention center is not merely a domestic place where foreign policy is executed. It is a place both locally and globally defined, where social interactions and cultural narratives transcend concrete walls and nation-state boundaries. Bodies are controlled, marked, and contested in this liminal space. This essay explores the detention and processing of Mariel Cubans at Fort Chaffee in 1980-1 as exercises of biopolitical management in the era of President Ronald Reagan’s revitalized nationalism. Through a process of inclusion and exclusion, a previously welcomed “anticommunist” exile group suddenly became cast by the media and politicians as “undesirable.” While some Cuban refugees were rendered acceptable additions to the national body through “American” cultural training, sponsorship, and resettlement, nonnational “excludables” were simultaneously rendered invisible through the act of detention.

Top Gun jako film w pełni realizujący wzorzec współpracy pomiędzy Pentagonem i Hollywood rozpatrywany jest często przez pryzmat propagandowych obrazów rekrutacyjnych, stanowiących pochwałę amerykańskiego systemu politycznego. Okazuje się jednak, że pod atrakcyjną fasadą filmu odnaleźć można metaforyczną opowieść o dojrzewaniu obywateli Stanów Zjednoczonych do roli reprezentantów świata demokratycznego. Odzwierciedlone w Top Gun wątki: rehabilitacji figury ojca, akceptacji zwierzchnictwa Ronalda Reagana nad narodem oraz wskrzeszenia podstaw konserwatywnej narracji o kulturze patriarchalnej miały przypomnieć narodowi amerykańskiemu o właściwej mu postawie narodu wybranego.

Eric J. Schmaltz.  "Soviet 'Paradise' Revisited:  Genocide, Dissent, Memory and Denial -- Part II."  Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Fall 2015):  pp. 22-31.  [Journal PDF uploaded.]  This is Part II of a short article series.  See also Part I in the listing above.

Many scholars are unaware of the resources available at the AHSGR.  See link to AHSGR Website for this and so many other fine research materials: 

https://ahsgr.site-ym.com/store/default.aspx?

A través de siete apartados se analiza la cronología de Star Wars, el contexto histórico-social que la determina y cómo se evidencia en la saga. También por qué se puede considerar Star Wars como un mito moderno y cómo refleja el viaje del héroe. Son estudiados aspectos religiosos que gira alrededor del concepto de la Fuerza, los aprendizajes biopedagógicos, la interculturalidad manifiesta en la saga y los elementos que ésta posee para que se desarrolle un nuevo camino espiritual llamado jedismo.
Abstract Through seven sections the chronology of Star Wars, the historical and social context that determines it and how is evident in the saga are analyzed. Also in which way Star Wars is a modern myth and how the hero's journey is reflected. Eeligious aspects that revolves around the concept of the Force, the biopedagogy learning, interculturalism manifested in the saga and the elements that this series of films has to develop a new spiritual path called jedism are studied.

https://peds-ansichten.de/2019/08/pnac-fpi-kreative-zerstoerung/

Die Geschichte, die wir ob der weltweiten Kriege zu hören bekommen, läuft immer nach dem gleichen Muster ab. Gesellschaften, vor allem "Diktaturen" versinken im Chaos, so dass die freiheitlichen Demokratien gezwungen sind, den bedrängten Menschen zu helfen. Doch ist das nicht die Realität. Ausgehend von den westlichen Machtzentren heraus und nach eigens in mächtigen Denkfabriken entwickelten Rezepten wird Chaos gezielt hervorgerufen. Beklemmend ist das Pathologische der Konzipierung und Umsetzung innerhalb dieser geistigen Schulen des Krieges.

This essay analyzes two speeches delivered by President Ronald Reagan on June 6, 1984, within the broader context of Reagan's Cold War foreign policy rhetoric. In his remarks at Pointe du Hoc and Omaha Beach, Reagan provided a vivid narrative of D-Day and applied the moral lessons of World War II to the present Cold War struggle between U.S. democracy and Soviet communism. In this essay, I analyze both speeches—Reagan's address at Pointe du Hoc and his
remarks at Omaha Beach—as independent and yet interrelated rhetorical moments within
Reagan's larger Cold War foreign policy narrative. Both speeches exemplify Reagan’s common
themes of U.S. patriotism, moral resolve, and commitment to the Western democratic alliance.
I first describe how Reagan's speeches on the fortieth anniversary of D-Day echoed themes
from his 1982 Address to the British Parliament and his 1983 speech to the National Association
of Evangelicals. I then analyze each speech separately, drawing on the archives of the Reagan
Library to illuminate the White House's goals for Reagan's remarks and showing how those
goals were manifested in the speeches themselves through a close reading of both texts.

Ronald Reagan’s victory in the 1980 presidential election marked a watershed moment in the history of the United States, heralding the triumph of the American conservative movement. Once a supporter of the New Deal, Reagan had come to symbolize the union of three diverse forms of conservatism—anti-communism, social traditionalism, and libertarianism—that were increasingly intertwined under the banner of the Republican Party. The unlikely development of this new conservative coalition was based upon the larger impacts of the civil rights movement in reshaping the dynamics of the Democratic and Republican parties, the social "backlash" of the Nixon era, the emergence of the religious right, and the economic and political crises that directly set the stage for Reagan’s stunning victory.

In five original, engaging chapters, The 1980 Presidential Election shows how Reagan’s journey to the White House was connected to the wider transformations of post-1945 American history. Supplemented by a fresh collection of primary documents—including previously unpublished transcripts of Reagan’s radio addresses of the late-1970s—this book is an ideal introduction to the origins and impact of the American conservative movement.

This analysis applies Kenneth Burke's dramatistic pentad to Ronald Reagan's "Challenger Address." First, I explain the rhetor's construction of the pentadic terms, and then I describe the dominant ratio in the speech: agency-agent. The expressed purpose of President Reagan's speech is "mourning and remembering" the seven astronauts who died on the space craft. However, the implicit act to which Reagan calls the nation is continued space exploration in the near future. The questions are who will explore and how?

The  Rastafari in the  Caribbean is still an enigma, long seen only in mythic terms by the majority of people globally.  Here  I  will examine them in light of a  seminal historic event,  in the history of the  Caribbean, namely the  Grenada revolution.

This paper reviews the Reagan administration's Iran-Contra scandal by approaching it from Kenneth Waltz' Three-Level Analysis. First, a brief contextualization of the developments in Nicaragua are provided. Then, the International System at the moment of the Affair is described. This is then followed by a review of the US’ situation as a State, including its forms to exercise power and its decision-making model on the matter. After that, the individual dimension is taken into account, analyzing Reagan’s persona, his style of leadership and the psychological techniques that may have been used in the Iran-Contra scandal.  This includes an interpretation of the most important documents released so far by the US government about the subject, which give unique information from the president’s inner circle.

Contrary to characterizations of the Berlin Wall as antithetical to modern developments, the article shows that the famed symbol of the Cold War in fact monumented modernity. It enabled the spliced projections of self and Other along stratagems of lack and perceived suture that finds its post-1989 extension in the proverbial "wall in the heads" ("Mauer in den Köpfen"). Texts discussed include speeches by Ronald Reagan, "Nikita" by Elton John and _Sonnenallee_ by Leander Haußmann.

L’objectif de cette thèse est d’étudier les transformations économiques, sociales, politiques et idéologiques qui caractérisent le développement du néolibéralisme aux États-Unis, depuis l’essor du mouvement conservateur qui porte Ronald Reagan au pouvoir en 1980 jusqu’à la crise financière de 2008. Par néolibéralisme, on entend une idéologie qui postule la supériorité des forces du marché et du secteur privé sur l’intervention de l’État, un ensemble de politiques qui visent à libérer ces forces des entraves étatiques, et un mode de gouvernance qui s’inspire de la gestion des entreprises privées. À la lecture des nombreux ouvrages consacrés au néolibéralisme, on peut constater un morcellement des connaissances sur certains aspects particuliers du sujet, telles que ses dimensions idéologique, politique ou internationale ; il manque des études qui tentent de concevoir le néolibéralisme à la fois dans sa globalité et dans la spécificité de son développement aux États-Unis. Il nous est paru que la méthode dite « progressive-régressive » de Jean-Paul Sartre permettrait de faire la synthèse qui manque à la littérature actuelle. Bien que Sartre ait développé cette méthode dialectique à l’attention des chercheurs en sciences humaines et sociales, ce cadre épistémologique cherche encore ses adeptes. En l’appliquant au néolibéralisme américain, nous espérons donc contribuer non seulement à la connaissance d’un grand sujet d’actualité, mais aussi au développement des méthodes de recherche dans le champ des études civilisationnistes.

Patrick Bateman, the notorious dystagonist of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, is an obtrusively sexist, racist, classist serial killer. Importantly, Bateman, who perceives most of those around him as excremental “dirt,” sets out on a mission to violently expel the human “trash” from his personal erotic utopia, a sterile, hypermediatized bubble of privilege. As Donna Lee Brien and Julien Murphet have observed, many early critics of the novel (and Mary Harron’s brilliant film adaptation) overlooked the profound allegorical quality of the text: Bateman personifies the often invisible systemic violence that subtends the erection of supposedly smooth-functioning, well-regulated urban utopias. Far from transpiring “no place” (u-topos), American Psycho narrows its gaze on the rapid gentrification of urban spaces such as Manhattan and, more broadly, the corporate homogenization of turn-of-the-millennium America. In this vein, it should come as no surprise that Bateman's mimetic mentors, his aspirational role-models, are Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan.

I aim to locate the scriptural force of American conservatism’s secular canon. My basic claim is that the canon created and managed the potential for symbolic fusion and fracture among conservatives. The canon provided the tools to weather the rocky marriage between various conservative sects: traditionalists, libertarians, neoconservatives, and others; the canon afforded resources for each faction to establish their bona fides and to protect their version of authentic conservatism from impostors and apostates. I conclude by analyzing the link between the principles of classical conservatism and canonical politics.

This paper attempts at understanding the representation of the otherized identity of homosexual men suffering from HIV/AIDS in Hollywood movies. Through an analysis of movies such as Parting Glances (1986), Longtime Companion (1989), and The Normal Heart (2014), this paper enquires into how the agency of the cinematic medium has been utilized in order to portray the socio-political liabilities of those who struggled with HIV/AIDS in the U.S.A. in the 1980s. The movies present how the crisis had been inadequately handled by the Ronald Reagan administration in addition to the contemporary social ramifications of those times which had aided in the stigmatization. The movies also portray the broader prejudiced concerns regarding AIDS, due to its initially exclusive association with the homosexual risk group, portraying an example of what Susan Sontag terms ‘AIDS as a metaphor’ - viewing it as a plague and thus as a judgement on the individuals who suffer from it as a punishment for deviant sexual behaviour. While considering the ways in which such movies function as a form of awareness for the public, the paper also enquires into how the efforts by the homosexual community towards combating AIDS and improving the sexual health of gay men in the dark 80s have been politically translated onscreen. The progressive ‘looking back’ trope present in the movies, and the differences amongst them, vis-à-vis the 1980s AIDS health crisis could assist in a study of how the lives of the affected gay men have been ‘re-membered’ in the context of LGBTQ sexualities, health and rights.