暗网吃瓜

Democracy is easily lauded, but it鈥檚 a complicated proposition, says W. J. T. Mitchell, this year鈥檚

鈥淲e talk about democracy as if it鈥檚 an unmixed value,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut we鈥檝e 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.

鈥淚t鈥檚 at the foundation of the democratic ideal, that it has to be hedged in by limits.鈥�

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.

While at Rochester, Mitchell will participate in a series of conversations about mass irrationality, delusion, and the representation of madness.

鈥淚鈥檓 looking at the concept of madness in a very broad sense, as a social problem, as well as an individual issue,鈥� he says. 鈥淢ob psychology and mass psychology are as important to the project as individual neurosis or psychosis.鈥�

Part of his visit will be devoted to discussing questions of madness in film and art. He鈥檒l participate in a screening and panel called 鈥淐razy Talk: Madness and Montage in Film.鈥� He鈥檒l also take part in a conversation聽at the Memorial Art Gallery, with artist Javier T茅llez, about cinema and mental health .

Mitchell鈥檚 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.

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鈥檚 film.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a personally motivated project, but the personal, as we know, is political,鈥� he says.

And politics will fall under Mitchell鈥檚 lens during his campus visit, too. He鈥檒l deliver a public lecture on April 19 that will probe the group psychology of American voters.

鈥淲e鈥檙e seeing a dramatic laboratory test of the endemic problems of democracy right now,鈥� he says.

A scholar of images and the editor-in-chief of Critical Inquiry, an influential journal of arts, culture, and politics, Mitchell plans to discuss President Donald Trump as a cultural icon. 鈥淓very president has an image, and that image is subject to caricature,鈥� he says. But Trump seems impervious, and Mitchell will devote some of his talk to examining that immunity.

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 鈥渉istorical nightmare.鈥�

鈥淥ne of the reasons why it鈥檚 so important to have a constitution that鈥檚 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鈥攕elf-regulation,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he division of powers between the executive, the legislative, and the judicial was crucial, partly because it鈥檚 a kind of psychological allegory. It鈥檚 a model of a well-balanced psyche.鈥�

But when the elements don鈥檛 function properly鈥攚hen any element is too powerful, or corrupted鈥攖he Constitution is endangered. Mitchell says: 鈥淚t鈥檚 why everyone says we鈥檙e headed for a constitutional crisis.鈥�

But he also sees signs for hope. He calls the legal probe being led by special counsel Robert Mueller 鈥渁 sign of good health.鈥�

鈥淭here are antibodies in the body politic. And the law is one of them.鈥�