On Clowns

What can we make of the clown sensation sweeping the United States?  Personally, my first instinct has been to say that the recent outbreak of alleged clown sightings, clown threats, and clown attacks in the United States is like nothing that we have ever seen before.  My second thought has been that this must all be some sort of sophisticated publicity that the producers of the forthcoming It movie have been orchestrating.  Yet in all this strangeness, I also wonder if we can actually dig deeper and see in this clown mania a distillation (of sorts) of other more ‘familiar’ aspects of our contemporary global politics—as seemingly unrelated as they might seem upon first glance.

In short, in addition to the clown qua clown hoopla, some of the more sensational events in recent global politics (both within and without the United States) seem preoccupied with (alleged) masquerades.  By way of example, the birther movement in the United States was premised on allegations that Obama was masquerading as a natural born citizen.  And the transgender bathroom controversy has also been deeply intertwined with fears over (gender) masquerading.  While these two issues are ones largely whipped up by the American right, the left is also not immune from all this.  For example, the American left was enraged by Rachel Dolezal.  And the vitriol directed by the European left at Muslim women’s hijabs and burqinis also gets commonly expressed in terms of uneasiness over ‘ostentatious’ dressing up and, moreover, what is potentially hiding inside ‘Muslim costumes’—for example Islamists or, even worse, terrorists.  And again in the arena of religion and the law, the distaste for Hobby Lobby and other religious exceptionalists in the United States often seems motivated (despite official disavowals by liberals) by a fear that corporations and other religious actors are just making up their beliefs on the fly (and also a worry that the rule of law may not be up to that challenge). 

I use the words ‘make up’ deliberately here, and for etymological reasons.  Indeed, when thinking about the clown recently, I have found myself gravitating to the Arabic word maskhara, and one (admittedly unusual) translation of it—namely ‘masquerade.’  (Maskhara is also one way to translate ‘clown’ into Urdu, and seems related to the Urdu/Hindi word for ‘to smile,’ namely muskaraana.)  Moreover, this Arabic word seems to have eventually made its way into Spanish, where it became máscara.  And this word in its Anglo dimensions is, of course, one very common component of ‘make up.’

The usual (derogatory) characterization of U.S. politics is that it exhibits high ‘paranoia.’  And, certainly, there are elements of that in a lot of what we are seeing.  But something about the clown furor draws my attention elsewhere, and to other possible characterizations of what we are seeing—and not just in the U.S., but also in Europe, and even in South Asia. 

While this is all too complicated to go into here, Kashmir could be seen to occupy a dangerously magical and illusionary (if also alluring) space for both India and Pakistan, somewhat akin to the position that the clown occupies right now in the United States.  More concretely, transgender politics (if one should call it that) in South Asia can often be consumed by transgender-on-transgender allegations that one’s antagonist is a ‘fake transgender’—in short, that one’s opponent is masquerading (if in a quite meta way).

But that is all for another discussion.  For now, however, I wonder whether it might be accurate to say that we have entered a ‘masquerade moment’ in global law and politics, one which overlaps with but is also distinct from periods of paranoia.  In short, that the clown is not mere strangeness, but is actually symptomatic (if also productive) of this moment.  And also here to stay awhile.

Comments

[Captain Hruska Carswell, Continuance King]

I miss Bozo, Cookie and the Grand Prize Game.

[anymouse]

Or maybe people are noticing all the Juggalos that have always been around us.

This is just media hystetia.