Description: The Performative Presidency brings together literatures describing presidential leadership strategies, public understandings of citizenship and news production and media technologies between the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Bill Clinton and details how the relations between these spheres have changed over time. Jason Mast demonstrates how interactions between leaders, public and media are organized in a theatrical way and argues that mass mediated plot formation and character development play an increasing role in structuring the political arena. He shows politics as a process of ongoing performances staged by motivated political actors, mediated by critics and interpreted by audiences, in the context of a deeply rooted, widely shared system of collective representations. The interdisciplinary framework of this book brings together a semiotic theory of culture with concepts from the burgeoning field of performance studies.
Brief description: Jason L. Mast is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Karl Mannheim Chair for Cultural Studies at Zeppelin University, Germany.
Review Quotes: "Given the large number of books that examine Bill Clinton and his presidency, it is extraordinary that Jason L. Mast tells us something new in his compelling account. By viewing Bill Clinton through the lens of performance theory, Mast manages to elucidate in new ways the "disconnect" between the public and private Clinton that continues to intrigue his friends and foes."
Mabel Berezin, Cornell University