Week 9 – The 1970s: Crisis and Hippies, Watergate, and into Postmodernism Decline Flashcards

1
Q

Crises of the 70s

A
  • The Richard Nixon Years (1968–1974)
  • Watergate (1972–1974)
  • Opening towards the Soviet Union and China (1972)
  • The Oil Embargo (1973–1974)
  • The end of the Vietnam War (1975)
  • The Gerald Ford Years (1974–1977)
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2
Q

The Rise and Fall of Nixon

A
  • Vice president to Eisenhower and close friend of Joseph McCarthy.
  • Lost presidential election in 1960 against Kennedy.
  • Admired for his patriotism and advocacy of traditional values.
  • Criticized as ruthless and unprincipled (“Tricky Dick”).
  • Wins 1968 election against Humbert Humphry.
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3
Q

Domestic politics record by Nixon I

A
  • Leaves most of domestic policy to his advisers H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman.
  • Creates AMTRAK to renovate the railroad net.
  • Lowers the voting age to 18 (formerly 21).
  • Initiates laws for the preservation of air and water and creates the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency).
  • Under his government, congress passes legislation increasing funding for Social Security, public housing, food stamps, Medicaid and Medicare, which is rather unusual for a Republican.
  • Tries, however, also to decrease the power of the federal government, and to raise the influence of state, county, and city authorities.
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4
Q

Domestic politics record by Nixon II

A
  • Nixon’s paradoxical political stance is evident also in his approach to the Civil Rights issue.
  • On the one hand, he passed policies that would guarantee employment also to minorities.
  • On the other hand, in order to appeal to a Southern electorate, he did not support (or effectively tried to slow down) the process of school desegregation.
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5
Q

Foreign Policy I: The Soviet Union

A
  • National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger becomes the shadow foreign minister
    o Shadow ministers are members of the opposition who have responsibility for scrutinizing the work of the government and individual ministers. Each shadow minister concentrates on the work of a particular minister and government department.
  • With his help, Nixon starts a policy aimed at de-escalating the tension with the Soviet Union.
  • Another quite surprising move, as Nixon has always been an open supporter of the necessity of the Cold War against the “red scare.”
  • Starts SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) with the Soviet Union to delimit the arms race.
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6
Q

Foreign Policy II: China

A
  • Nixon seeks contact with both Russia and China also in order to end the Vietnam War.
  • Officially recognizes China’s diplomatic existence and is the first US president to visit the People’s Republic of China.
  • His trip of 1972 took place a few months before the new election day.
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7
Q

Foreign Policy III: The Middle East

A
  • The Middle East increasingly becomes a trouble spot.
  • On October 6, 1973, at Yom Kippur Day (Atonement Day), Israel is attacked by Egyptian and Syrian Forces, backed by Soviet supplies.
  • Within two weeks, with the help of large-scale assistance from the US, Israel routs the invaders, and heads for the capitals of Syria and Egypt.
  • During the Yom Kippur War, six Arab nations unilaterally raise oil prices by 70%
  • On October 20, eleven Arab states stop shipping oil to the US due to its support of Israel.
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8
Q

The Oil Crisis (1973–1974)

A
  • In December of 1973, OPEC quadruples the oil prices, which leads to a severe economic crisis in the US, Western Europe, and Japan.
  • Long queues appear at gasoline stations; some nations introduce car-free days.
  • The high oil prices lead to high inflation rates in the industrialized countries, and to the highest in the US since WWII.
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9
Q

The Watergate Crisis I

A
  • In 1972, as part of Nixon’s re-election effort, a massive campaign of political spying and “dirty tricks” is initiated against Democrats, leading to the Watergate break-in to plant bugs (tiny audio transmitters) inside the offices of the Democratic National Committee, on June 17, 1972.
  • Two young reporters from the Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, begin a pursuit of the facts surrounding the break-in. Their informant, a senior FBI official, acquires the famous name “deep throat.”
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10
Q

The Watergate Crisis II

A
  • The Watergate burglars go on trial in January 1973 and, on May 17, the Senate Select Committee begins televised hearings.
  • A month later, former Presidential Counsel John Dean testifies there was an ongoing White House cover-up, and that Nixon has been personally involved in the payment of hush money to the five burglars and two other operatives involved in planning the Watergate break-in.
  • Three weeks later, another Nixon aide revealed the President had ordered hidden microphones installed in the Oval Office in the spring of 1971 and has recorded most conversations since then on audio tape.
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11
Q

The Watergate Crisis III

A
  • The tapes become the focus of an intensive year-long legal battle between all three branches of the U.S. government.
  • In October of 1973, Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who has been appointed by the Nixon administration, publicly vows to obtain the tapes despite Nixon’s strong objections.
  • Nixon responds to public outrage by initially agreeing to turn over some of the tapes.
  • However, the White House then reveals that two of the tapes no longer exist and that there is an 18-minute blank gap on a crucial recording of the President and Haldeman taped three days after the Watergate break-in.
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12
Q

The Watergate Crisis IV

A
  • In November of 1973, amid all of the controversy, Nixon makes a scheduled appearance before 400 Associated Press managing editors in Florida.
  • During a Q&A he maintains his innocence, stating: “in all of my years in public life I have never obstructed justice… People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.” – History would prove him wrong…
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13
Q

The Watergate Crisis V

A
  • After hearing from Republican congressional leaders that his impeachment and conviction are certain, Nixon resigns on August 9, 1974.
  • The enormity of the scandal is echoed in the comment of Senator Sam Ervin: “I think that the Watergate tragedy is the greatest tragedy this country has ever suffered. I used to think that the Civil War was our country’s greatest tragedy, but I do remember that there were some redeeming features in the Civil War in that there was some spirit of sacrifice and heroism displayed on both sides. I see no redeeming features in Watergate.”
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14
Q

Gerald Ford: Years of Disillusionment

A
  • Gerald Ford takes over from Richard Nixon.
  • Less than a month after taking office, Ford ruins his presidency by granting Nixon a “full, free, and absolute pardon” for any crimes he may have committed while in the White House, even while the investigations against Nixon are not yet closed.
  • Ford thus heightens the traditionally suspicious stance that Americans harbor towards Washington.
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15
Q

Gerald Ford to Jimmy Carter (1977–1981)

A
  • By granting draft violators and deserters amnesty if they served a two-year public service, Ford angers both hawks and doves.
  • He disenchants more Americans by vetoing nearly sixty bills, including bills on education, housing, and health care.
  • In 1975, American economy, already weakened by the Oil Crisis, plunges into ist worst recession since the Great Depression.
  • Only in 1975 is Vietnam war is finally over, and the Vietcong flag waving over Saigon reopens old wounds.
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16
Q

Developments Abroad

A
  • Chile: In 1973, in a military takeover, the popular socialist president Allende is killed, and replaced by the junta leader General Pinochet.
  • Argentina: In 1974, a military, right-wing leadership is also established in Argentina after the death of President Peron.
  • Europe: 1974 also sees the end of dictatorships in non-Soviet Europe, such as Greece, Portugal, and later Spain, after the death of Franco.
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17
Q

Developments at home

A
  • Environmentalism and Women‘s liberation become stronger.
  • Women enter the United States Military Academy in West Point in 1976 for the first time.
  • While the birth rate falls to an all-time low, the divorce rate increases by 66% in the 70s.
  • After the publication of Rachel Carson‘s enormously influential book Silent Spring in 1962, government action is taken by implementing the “Endangered Species Act” in 1973.
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18
Q

Roe vs. Wade (1973)

A
  • Decision of the US Supreme Court that ruled that, according to the Constitution, women have a right to abortion within the first three months of pregnancy.
  • The name comes from “Jane Roe,” the pseudonym of Norma MacCorvey, the Texas woman who filed the lawsuit, and the district attorney of Dallas County Henry Wade.
  • This landmark decision was overruled in 2022 in the “Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.” The Supreme Court decreed that the Constitution does not guarantee a right to abortion under federal law and left the issue up to the singular states.
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19
Q

The “Me-Decade”…

A
  • Following the stereotypical homogeneity of the 1950s and the tumult of the 1960s, many American institutions have broken down and Americans are left with very little holding them together. In lieu of such common fabric, many scholars argue that Americans in the 1970s form the “me-generation.”
  • The term me decade is coined by novelist Tom Wolfe in the New York Magazine in August 1976, describing the new American preoccupation with self-awareness and the collective retreat from history, community, and human reciprocity.
  • The term describes the age so aptly that it quickly becomes commonly associated with the 1970s. Compared to the 1960s, Americans in the 1970s are self-absorbed and passive.
  • Americans turn from street theater to self-therapy, from political activism to psychological analysis. Everyone, it seems, has an analyst, adviser, guru, genie, Prophet, priest, or spirit.
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20
Q

What are the Hippie Movement‘s agendas?

A
  • Pacifism
  • Anarchism
  • Environmentalism
  • Consciousness-enhancement
  • Sexual liberation
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21
Q

Woodstock 1969

A
  • Over 500,000 visitors assemble to watch the biggest rock-concert ever.
  • Jimmy Hendrix plays his by now (in)famous rendering of the national anthem.
22
Q

Confessional Poetry

A
  • Term coined in 1959 to describe the poems of Robert Lowell
  • Personal tone
  • Colloquial and direct speech to talk about psychological experiences and actual events
  • Poem’s speaker=poem’s author
  • Known authors in the 70s: Plath and Rich
23
Q

Sylvia Plath

A
  • Highly autobiographical and introspective poems
  • Poems explore mental anguish, marriage with Ted Hughes and experience as a mother
  • Uses history to explain herself, absorbs and personalizes the socio-political

“I think personal experience shouldn’t be a kind of shut box and mirror looking narcissistic experience. I believe it should be generally relevant, to such things as Hiroshima and Dachau, and so on”

24
Q

Adrienne Rich

A
  • One of America’s most influential public intellectuals
  • Radical poems both in terms of style (irregular free-verse, colloquialisms) and content (feminist/political)
  • Key to second-wave feminism of 1960s and 70s
  • Personal rooted in the political

“The personal is Political.”

25
Q

“Morning Song” (1963) by Sylvia Plath

A
  • Ambivalent experience of being a mother
  • Experience set out by love (“Love set you going like a fat gold watch”) but highly disorienting as the child’s birth changes her entire world (“your bald cry / took its place among the elements”)
  • Attempt to reserve part of her own identity, and the realization that she follows an ideologically charged ideal of motherhood (“One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral / In my Victorian nightgown”)
  • In her provocative honesty about her feelings, Plath defies society’s expectations about the compulsory, Victorian joy of motherhood
26
Q

“From an Old House in America” (1974) by Adrienne Rich

A
  • Rich emphasizes the exploitation of women during the founding moments of the nation, stressing the violence directed at women in a system built on slavery and characterized by strict and unequal gender roles.
  • She imagines herself being shipped to America like a slave (“chained to the corpse beside me,”) as her own body turns itself into “a hollow ship bearing sons to the wilderness”
  • Rich negates the metaphorical comparison with the “Virgin Land” or “Mother Earth” of the frontier (“I am not the wheatfield / nor the virgin forest”) and emphasizes the violence of male pioneers, selling women as “breeding-wenches”
  • She asserts, however, strength and power from her resilience and abilities to endure and suffer (“my power is brief and local / but I know my power”)
27
Q

A Look Back: The Arts

A
  • Between 1940s and 1970s, the art scene sees considerable changes
  • Armory Show in 1917: US public was confronted for the first time with the works of Picasso, Braque, and the cubists
28
Q

Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko are known for being members of what Art movement?

A

“Abstract Expressionism” (1940s)

29
Q

Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns are known for being members of what Art movement?

A

New Dada (1950s)

30
Q

Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Keith Haring are known for being members of what Art movement?

A

Pop Art (1950s)

31
Q

Lackson Pollock: “Abstract Expressionism” (1940s)

A
  • One of the most renown and influential painters of Abstract Expressionism. Pollock breaks from conventions in both content and technique.
  • Creates monumental works (up to 2x3 meters) meant to reflect their inner psyche.
  • Emphasis on dynamism and energy, mostly abstract forms.
  • Influenced by the experience of the war, emphasizes human irrationality and vulnerability and attempts to achieve a directness and immediacy of expression
  • Radical new technique consisting in pouring and dripping paining directly on immense canvases laying on the ground.
  • His way of painting has been defined as action painting since the artist does not create but act on the canvas.
32
Q

Mark Rothko: “Abstract Expressionism” (1940s)

A
  • Different form of abstract expressionism
  • Rothko stresses the expressive potential of colors, taking a more reflective approach to painting, reducing its works to the essential colors.
  • Square of colors should provoke a quasi-religious experience.
  • Huge canvases that should be watched from a distance of 45 centimeters, so that the painting completely overwhelms the field of vision of the observer.
33
Q

Jasper Johns: New Dada (1950s)

A
  • Main North American artists associated with the New Dada movement.
    o Dadaism originated in Zurich as a reaction to World War I and the nationalism that many thought had led to the war.
  • Johns depicts commonplace objects that the mind already knows.
  • Objects are clearly works of art.
  • Artistic composition is at the center of Johns’ works. It invites the observer to ask questions about the symbolic and philosophical significance of the objects portrayed, the relation between physical and depicted objects, real and mental things.
34
Q

Robert Rauschenberg: New Dada (1950s)

A
  • Painter belonging to the New Dada movement.
  • Rather than simply depicting ordinary things, Rauschenberg mixes paint with ordinary objects directly on the canvas.
  • By incorporating objects as art materials, Rauschenberg was true to his credo that “a picture is more real when it is made out of the real world”
35
Q

The advent of Pop Art: Andy Warhol

A
  • Pop art (short for popular art) develop in New York in the 1950s and 60s
  • Uses imagery from popular culture
  • After a period of post-War austerity, pop art artists focused on the appeal and glamour of commercial design and mass-produced objects, reacting against the conceptual and abstract paintings of Abstract Expressionism.
  • Andy Warhol serially reproduces commonplace objects such as the Campbell’s soup cans or the Coca Cola bottle, as well as heads of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Mao
  • He mimics the dynamics of mass-produced objects. Consumer culture is at its peak in 1960s North America. Things are produced and consumed in quantities unheard of until then as the markets expand and Americans have the means to spend as never before.
  • Warhol effectively commercializes art, going against the elitism surrounding art to appeal to as wide an audience as possible
36
Q

Roy Lichtenstein: Pop Art

A
  • Key figure of the Pop Art movement
  • Lichtenstein expands the domain of art by borrowing images from comic books and advertisements.
  • His art touches on questions about authorship, style, and the hierarchy of different art forms.
  • Similarly to Warhol, Lichtenstein goes against the expectation of what the subject matter of painting should be, creating works rooted in popular culture that could potentially be appreciated by a wider public.
37
Q

Keith Haring: Pop Art

A
  • One of the best-known street artists of his generations
  • Haring dealt with political and social issues, from civil rights to minority discriminations and drug abuse
  • As an openly gay artist, Haring’s art raised awareness of AIDS and encouraged research in a time when politicians were reluctant to develop new treatment or even speak about it
  • His aim was to make art accessible to everyone, an attempt that he put into practice by drawing in New York subway stations, and filling empty spaces along New York streets with his art
38
Q

The Rise of Postmodernism

A
  • From 1910 to about 1950, modernism had been the most influential artistic style in literature and the arts.
  • With abstract expressionism and pop art, a new, “surface art” was developing.
  • The concept of Postmodernism is first mentioned in relation to architecture by Charles Jenks.
  • In architecture, the international style of Frank Lloyd Wright and the “form-follows-function” paradigm of modernist architects such as Mies van der Rohe and Martin Gropius has been replaced by a playful, ornamental style that freely plays with and “quotes” earlier architectural styles.
39
Q

What’s Modernism?

A
  • criticized and radically subjectivized Enlightenment’s claim to a universal truth
  • tries to radically break with preceding artistic styles and rules (“make it new!”)
  • Gertrude Stein (“a rose is a rose is a rose”) and William Carlos Williams (“no truth but in things”) try still to unearth objects from the semantic sedimentation under which they were buried.
40
Q

What’s Postmodernism?

A
  • denies any truth value whatsoever
  • uses history as a toolbox (“nothing new under the sun…”). Blurs the line between authentic and fake
  • American literary postmodernists such as Donald Barthelme, John Barth, Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon do not search for some truth, but rather show the constructedness of any “reality”.
41
Q

Characteristics of Postmodernism

A
  • Quoting of other texts / Intertextuality through an array of techniques
    Examples:
    o Donald Barthelme’s Snow White uses the original fairy tale in order to comment on contemporary social issues.
    o John Barth’s Letters, consists of letters written to him by characters from his previous fiction.
  • Innovation through recombination of known styles
  • Self-reflexiveness on the fictionality of the text and on the artistic or creative process (metafiction: “books about books”). Writers don’t hide the fact that they are producing a literary text.
  • “Anything goes”: Critics object that the loss of any binding norms and rules (“meta-narratives”) leads to anarchy and moral erosion.
  • Playfulness and irony
42
Q

Cheever to Barthelme

A
  • While in Cheever’s story – sometimes referred to as ‘neo-realistic’ – there is something like a “realistic” language that tries to capture a reality that seems to escape its grasp, Barthelme has given up on the attempt to even capture it.
  • Barthelme’s story presents characteristic features of Postmodernism: Self-reflectiveness, irony, intertextuality, playfulness, and a mixture of fictive and non-fictive texts
43
Q

The linguistic turn I

A
  • Ferdinand de Saussure: the arbitrariness of the linguistic system
  • Cours de linguistique générale: series of lectures given in Geneva between 1907 and 1911
  • Language as a system of arbitrary signs whose distinction is based on convention.
  • No logical relation between the acoustic image and the mental image (there is no reason why a tree should be called tree)
  • Access to reality is not only mediated by language but starts with those arbitrary signs that we call language.
    o Signifier: Material Acoustic or Written Sign
    o Signified: Mental Image
44
Q

The linguistic turn II

A
  • When there is no positive (logical) relation between a signifier and a signified, then all signification is created in a purely negative way
  • “Cat” does then mean cat to us not because there is any connection between the word (written or spoken) and the mental image, but because it differs from “hat” or “cut”.
  • Cat thus evokes all those other signifiers by differing from them.
  • If we experience the world through a radically negative and purely differential system, then all perception and indeed language itself is highly volatile and unstable.
  • No one meaning is ever present but is created through a playful differential mechanism.
  • No truth can then ever be present; all truth is deferred and deducted from something prior to it – ad infinitum.
45
Q

The new philosophy of postmodernism: Poststructuralism

A
  • Rooted in structuralism but going beyond it, as the term suggests, poststructuralism revisits ideas of language and signification within a philosophical and social context.
  • Structuralism: based on stable, close, and linear systems that could easily be understood and dissected
  • Poststructuralism: emphasizes the open nature, complexity, multiplicity, and ambiguity of social and conceptual systems.
46
Q

Influential postmodernist philosophers

A
  • Roland Barthes
  • Julia Kristeva
  • Michel Foucault
  • Jacques Derrida
  • Jean-Francois Lyotard
47
Q

Roland Barthes

A
  • Explores the notion of textuality.
  • “The Death of the author” (1967) goes against the notion of authorial control and considers literary works as texts open to active interpretation from the part of the reader. Marks the freedom from a predominant authority.
48
Q

Julia Kristeva

A
  • Intertextuality. Each and every text exists in relation to other texts. As she defines it, intertextuality is “a mosaic of quotations, any text is the absorption and the transformation of another”.
49
Q

Michel Foucault

A
  • Explores the notion of textuality.
  • “The Death of the author” (1967) goes against the notion of authorial control and considers literary works as texts open to active interpretation from the part of the reader. Marks the freedom from a predominant authority.
50
Q

Jacques Derrida

A
  • Explores the relation between language and the construction of meaning.
  • Concept of difference: if one signifier necessarily leads to another in an infinite chain, then meaning is never stable or static, but is constantly evolving. No knowledge should be considered as foundational but should always be seen as a process of negotiation between conflicting concepts.
51
Q

Jean-François Lyotard

A
  • Postmodernism as a cultural condition characterized by its suspicion of grand meta-narratives (“traditional means by which we order the world”)
52
Q

Susan Sontag

A
  • Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation (1964) becomes an enormously influential text, arguing that literature ought not to be read to be interpreted, since no single interpretation can claim more authority than another.

“Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities.”

“Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.”