Celebratory Politics: Late Modern Promotionalism and Political Communication
Péter Csigó
Celebratory Politics: Late Modern Promotionalism and Political Communication
Abstract
This paper introduces the term “celebratory politics”, and theorizes it as a typical emanation of late modern, mediatised, promotional politics. Celebratory politics emerges when a political actor mobilizes a vast amount of promotional resources so that its opponents feel forced to suspend their criticism and (although reluctantly) support the protagonist. Celebratory performances are maximally sensation-seeking and spectacular, they create a promotionally aggrandized, expressive ideological commodity which dooms all competitors to silence and makes resistance particularly difficult for the audience. Celebratory performances have the power of temporarily suspending the fundamentally competitive character of democratic politics.
The paper presents an empirical, survey-based case study from the 2001-2 electoral campaign in Hungary. That year, the right-wing Government mobilized an unprecedented propaganda, successfully creating a celebratory space from which the left-wing Opposition deliberately stepped out. In spite of its glamorous aura, the Government’s performance suscitated mixed audience reactions: its high attention-grabbing force was at odds with its unquestionably weaker power to politically engage voters. The intense and complex reactions elicited by the analysed celebratory performance will allow us to reflect on the effects of “commercial media logic” on democratic politics.
Péter Csigó is assistant lecturer at Budapest University of Technology and Economics, and PhD candidate at EHESS, Paris. His research area includes issues of popular media and politics, media commercialization, media reception analysis, and the convergence of internet and television. E-mail: csigo-AT-mtapti.hu.