{"id":312012,"date":"2018-04-17T12:59:07","date_gmt":"2018-04-17T16:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=312012"},"modified":"2018-04-18T08:53:39","modified_gmt":"2018-04-18T12:53:39","slug":"what-happens-when-democracy-becomes-irrational-312012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/what-happens-when-democracy-becomes-irrational-312012\/","title":{"rendered":"What happens when democracy becomes irrational?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Democracy is easily lauded, but it\u2019s a complicated proposition, says W. J. T. Mitchell, this year\u2019s Distinguished Visiting Humanist.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe talk about democracy as if it\u2019s an unmixed value,\u201d he says. \u201cBut we\u2019ve known since the Athenian democracy that it goes along with imperial adventurism, which was the downfall of Athens, and with the rise of tyrants and demagogues.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s at the foundation of the democratic ideal, that it has to be hedged in by limits.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

EVENTS<\/strong><\/h3>\n

W. J. T. Mitchell will take part in a\u00a0variety of events<\/a> during his visit to Rochester as this year\u2019s Distinguished Visiting Humanist<\/a>, a program of the Humanities Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n

April 19<\/strong>
\n\u201cCrazy Talk: Madness and Montage in Film\u201d
\nScreening and panel discussion, also featuring Rachel Haidu, Jeffrey Tucker, and members of the OnFilm Group.
\n5:30 p.m.
\n1400 Wegmans Hall
\nFree and open to the public<\/p>\n

April 20<\/strong>
\nPanel discussion on the state of the humanities and Critical Inquiry. <\/em>Mitchell joins\u00a0Morris Eaves, Joan Rubin, Robert Doran, and Paul Duro.
\n10 a.m.
\nHumanities Center Conference Room D
\nFree and open to the public<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerican Psychosis: Trump and the Nightmare of History\u201d
\nLecture
\n4 p.m.
\nHoyt Auditorium
\nFree and open to the public<\/p>\n

April 22<\/strong>
\n\u201cMeet the Artist: Javier T\u00e9llez in Conversation with W. J. T. Mitchell\u201d
\n2 p.m.
\nMemorial Art Gallery
\nFree with museum admission. Free to University faculty, students, and staff with valid ID.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Mitchell is the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago. His work involves broad questions of representation and imagery, and he frequently investigates issues of cultural politics and political culture.<\/p>\n

While at Rochester, Mitchell will participate in a series of conversations about mass irrationality, delusion, and the representation of madness.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking at the concept of madness in a very broad sense, as a social problem, as well as an individual issue,\u201d he says. \u201cMob psychology and mass psychology are as important to the project as individual neurosis or psychosis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of his visit will be devoted to discussing questions of madness in film and art. He\u2019ll participate in a screening and panel called \u201cCrazy Talk: Madness and Montage in Film.\u201d He\u2019ll also take part in a conversation\u00a0at the Memorial Art Gallery, with artist Javier T\u00e9llez, about cinema and mental health .<\/p>\n

Mitchell\u2019s son, Gabriel, was a filmmaker, who lived for 20 years with schizophrenia. One of his ambitions was to make a film about the entire history of madness as a cultural formation. He planned to look back to the Greeks and non-Western cultures and embrace both collective and individual forms of irrationality, Mitchell says.<\/p>\n

He carried on the work after Gabriel took his own life five years ago, now writing a book that began as background research for his son\u2019s film.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a personally motivated project, but the personal, as we know, is political,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

And politics will fall under Mitchell\u2019s lens during his campus visit, too. He\u2019ll deliver a public lecture on April 19 that will probe the group psychology of American voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing a dramatic laboratory test of the endemic problems of democracy right now,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

A scholar of images and the editor-in-chief of Critical Inquiry<\/em>, an influential journal of arts, culture, and politics, Mitchell plans to discuss President Donald Trump as a cultural icon. \u201cEvery president has an image, and that image is subject to caricature,\u201d he says. But Trump seems impervious, and Mitchell will devote some of his talk to examining that immunity.<\/p>\n

He views the current political landscape, which he sees shaped by collective irrationality, with alarm. Legal structure, he says, is the bulwark against what he calls a \u201chistorical nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the reasons why it\u2019s so important to have a constitution that\u2019s durable and respected is that a constitution is a way of addressing collective psychology. The founders saw that in an individual person, what you might call a balanced mentality involves deliberation, careful forethought, a kind of argument in which you consider all alternatives, and then the establishment of rules and guidelines\u2014self-regulation,\u201d he says. \u201cThe division of powers between the executive, the legislative, and the judicial was crucial, partly because it\u2019s a kind of psychological allegory. It\u2019s a model of a well-balanced psyche.\u201d<\/p>\n

But when the elements don\u2019t function properly\u2014when any element is too powerful, or corrupted\u2014the Constitution is endangered. Mitchell says: \u201cIt\u2019s why everyone says we\u2019re headed for a constitutional crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he also sees signs for hope. He calls the legal probe being led by special counsel Robert Mueller \u201ca sign of good health.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are antibodies in the body politic. And the law is one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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