The widely disseminated image of Emmett Till's mutilated corpse rhetorically transformed the lynched black body from a symbol of unmitigated white power to one illustrating the ugliness of racial violence and the aggregate power of the black community. This reconfiguration was, in part, an effect of the black community's embracing and foregrounding Till's abject body as a collective "souvenir" rather than allowing it to be safely exiled from public life.
This essay explores how the rhetorical binary of
purity and contamination undermined Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential
campaign. Instead of insisting on an unadulterated space from which to
launch their attacks on a corrupt system, the Greens might have had more
success by embracing their role as an infecting agent--a kind of green
virus--actively forcing a reconfiguration of American politics.
This article analyzes the Target Corporation as an example of the foregrounding of design in contemporary consumer culture. To understand the destiny of the manufactured object in an age of aesthetic capitalism, this article argues that the previous relationships among use value, exchange value, and sign value need to be reconfigured. A new dimension of the object is emerging, one that is best understood as combining aura and affect.
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