Fantasm: The triumph of form (An essay on the democratic sublime)

This essay attempts to counter the dreariness of postmodern critique and culture by locating the vital force of phantasy, rhetoric, argument, hope, and memory in contemporary public affairs. More particularly, it engages recent controversial about collective memory and the FDR memorial statue especially to generate a greater sensitivity to the fact that we are agents (and not just dupes) of history. The body, symbolic and material, is a con site for the history, theory, and practice of democracy, I argue, and ir the hard kernel of collective identification and division. Methodologically, the essay fuses Aristotle and Lacan 's ideas about phantasy as a perceptual device, which gages and creates public and personal desire, as an analytic frame for the study of public discourse.