Imagining Politics
Interpretations in Political Science and Political Television
Narrative on television and scholarly narrative reveal the secret underbelly of politics and political science
Description
Imagining Politics critically examines two interpretations of government. The first comes from pop culture fictions about politics, the second from academic political science. Stephen Benedict Dyson argues that televised political fictions and political science theories are attempts at meaning-making, reflecting and shaping how a society thinks about its politics.
By taking fiction seriously, and by arguing that political science theory is homologous to fiction, the book offers a fresh perspective on both, using fictions such as The West Wing, House of Cards, Borgen, Black Mirror, and Scandal to challenge the assumptions that construct the discipline of political science itself.
Imagining Politics is also about a political moment in the West. Two great political shocks—Brexit and the election of Donald Trump—are set in a new context here. Dyson traces how Brexit and Trump campaigned against our image of politics as usual, and won.
Stephen Benedict Dyson is Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut.
Reviews
"Whether professors use individual chapters in introductory courses or the whole book in a politics and pop culture course, students will find engaging writing and well-defined concepts. ... Imagining Politics provides a compelling analysis of a political era in which truth is at least as strange as fiction, where satirists struggle to come up with headlines that are more extreme than reality, and where facts are optional for many politicians and their followers."
- Perspectives on Politics
-- Perspectives on Politics
"Creative and engaging, Imagining Politics: Interpretations in Political Science and Political Television is a plug-and-play text for an undergraduate course on politics and popular culture."
- Joseph R. Fitzgerald
—Political Science Quarterly