The Crisis of Legitimation in Bush’s America and Henry IV’s England

Abstract

When considering political practices across la longue durée, from the medi- eval period to the modern, from the English monarchy to the American presidency, one might consider a number of points of contact: the composition of elites who support those in power and upon whose power their status depends; the activities of political operatives whose efforts insulate those in power from accusation and danger; the motives of the economic oligarchies who most benefit from their candidates’ successes; the cross-generational family and kinship networks that engender power and benefit from those relationships; and many other factors that center upon the persons, structures, and processes of power. However, my point of reference between the medieval and modern periods concerns a defining absence at the center of two political moments and the discursive techniques used to traverse that gap.

Conditioned by the social dynamics of what Paul Virilio calls the “dromology” of contemporary society and by what Jacques Derrida terms the “logic of the supplement,” the Bush White House, similar to Henry IV’s Lancastrian regime, has configured a politics of the eternal present that covers over the absence of legitimate political authority.