STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION AND DEFORMATIVE TRANSPARENCY

[Alberto JIMÉNEZ URE]

AYER Y HOY DESAHUCIADO

«Terrible ser ciudadano de una república donde un tirano de relevo generacional se multiplica en varios hasta no saber cómo enfrentar tantos inhumanos juntos, sostenidos por una fuerza armada eternamente proclive corromperse: por ello, toda mi vida ha sido [ayer y hoy] la de un desahuciado»

(Alberto JIMÉNEZ URE)

(Persuasion in politics, propaganda, and public health)

By Isaac NAHON-SERFATY

[…] In a similar vein, in Venezuelan writer Alberto Jiménez Ure published the novel Desahuciados in 1998 [the year Chávez wast first elect president] where he envisioned many of the grotesque aesthetics that would eventually come to dominate Venezuelan come politics and political communication. Jiménez Ure (1998/2015) called esperpentos a sub-class of oppressed characters «those irremediably unhappy being that kept asking what was beyond the universal shell of concave filter of the light» (p. 101 our translation) In a very poetic way, he presented the nation of distorted mediation (i. e. the Concave Filter of the Light) that keeps that espertentos away from a certain truth.

In summary, the politics of excesses produce an effect of saturation and, paradoxically, create more opacity than transparency even is the bearers of this rhetoric of full disclosure claim the opposite (e. g. Julian Assange or Edward Snowden) As Zaretsky (2017a) state about Trump’presidency:

Since then, as each new day bring a new scandal, lie or outrage, it has become increasingly difficult to find our epistemological and ethical bearing: the spectacle swallows us all […] ¿Who among us recalls the many lies told by Trump on the campaign trail? ¿Who can re-experience the shock felt when first seeing or hearing the access «Hollywood» tape?  Who can separate the real Trump from the countless parodies of Trump and the real dangers from the mere idiocies? Who remembers the Russians when our own Customs and Border officials are coming for our visas? (pr. 9)

Even still, grotesque transparency reinforces the impression of authenticity, which is a valuable trait in populism and polarizing stratagems, Moreover, the aesthetic value of such grotesque representations translates into behaviours of active support for these disruptive performances, or at least into complacent attitudes towards the esperpentic public figure. Finally, this hermeneutic exercise has shown the importance of including cultural dimensions in strategic analysis in order to uncover what Alexander (2006) calls the sociocultural «script» of «background representations» (p. 58)

NOTE.

I requested permission to National Broadcasting Company [NBC]  to publish a video capture of the infamous video where Donald Trump and Billy Bush exchanged derogatory words about women. NBC denied me the permission (April 6, 2018)

Associate Professor and Director, Department of Communication, Faculty of Arts, University of Ottawa

Room: Desmarais Building, DMS11156 (55 Laurier Avenue East)
Office: 613-562-5800 ext. 3836
Work E-mail: [e-mail]

[https://cdp-hrc.uottawa.ca/en/people/nahon-serfaty-isaac]

[Elias Antonio Almada]