Tales of the state : narrative in contemporary U.S. politics and public policy /

This collection of essays aims to democratize public policy making and America by showing how political debates, social problems, and individual identities are constituted by the "stories" used to describe them. Behind well-established "metastories" about liberalism and the Constitution, assessments of public health, conspiracy theories, and national myths ("the American dream") stand, not truths or lies, but powerful cultural constructs that entrench, empower, disable, or victimize. Favoring inclusive and mutually respectful stories, while denying that they currently exist, the essayists urge resistance to the establishment; its oppressive designs are manifested most ominously in the definition of terms such as Clarence Thomas's self-description, the Cold War, NAFTA, the Contract with America, progressive education, and globalism, among others. They represent efforts to bolster elites and to reinforce prejudices against the powerless, whose well-being hinges on "counterstories" or redescriptions of their position. Saying it apparently does make it so. Attacking regulations of "cyberporn" for inhibiting the inscription of alternate identities or urging welfare recipients to resist baneful stereotyping by refusing to act like recipients might strike some advocates of pluralism as missing the forest for the trees, if not as altogether surreal. Appropriate for upper-division undergraduates and above. P. K. Jensen; Kenyon College