Special Issue: Best of Battlegrounds States 2009

Welcome to this special issue of The ECCCS. The papers in this issue were selected
as the “Best of Battlegrounds” and were presented at the Battleground
States Conference 2009: The Future, in Bowling Green, Ohio. These papers represent some
of the many outstanding presentations featured at this year’s conference. For the
last four years, The Culture Club: Cultural Studies Scholars’ Association, at Bowling
Green State University, has hosted this conference as a platform to discuss
cross-disciplinary approaches to cultural studies scholarship and has encouraged
graduate students, emerging and independent scholars, junior faculty, artists,
activists, filmmakers, and educators to participate..

Contents:

Gary Cirelli: Why Ninteen Eighty-Four Matters,Preliminary
Thoughts

Joe D Faykosh: Battleground 2012: Electoral Shifts for the 2012
Presidential Election

Seth Vannatta: Formalism, Scientism, and Historicism: Law as a
Synthesis of Social Time in Legal Pragmatism

Critical Essays:

Why Ninteen
Eighty-Four Matters,Preliminary Thoughts by Gary Cirelli

Since his death in 1950 George Orwell has become the rope in a massive game of
tug-a-war, with all points on the political spectrum attempting to claim him in their
camp. Close attention to his writings and life have caused many (such as Christopher
Hitchens) to declare him an essential voice in the history of dissent, while it has
moved others (such as Scott Lucas) to denounce him as an agent of the British Empire.
Still with all this intense scrutiny it seems an important concept may be slipping
through the cracks.

This paper shows that through their focus on minuscule detail (such as the
intricacies of “double-think” or Orwell’s lack of economic
knowledge), it’s fair to say that the academic community may have forgotten
Orwell’s greatest contribution to the world was not his political writings, but
his conception of the dystopic world presented in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Through his
portrayal of human apathy and the power that can be obtained by governments because of
it, Orwell strikes a cord inside readers’ brains reminding them that if
something so horrible can be conceived on paper, then it could one day be actualized
in the real world.

Looking into the future and given the current conduct of the United States
government, reflected in the Patriot Act and Guantanamo Bay, citizens must now ask
themselves how much they are willing to allow or give away in the name of national
security. When attempting to make these decisions, this paper reminds citizens that
Nineteen Eighty-Four can still serve as a powerful reminder of what can happen if the
they choose to idly accept their fate and not actively participate in the governmental
process.

Battleground
2012: Electoral Shifts for the 2012 Presidential Election By Joe D. Faykosh

This paper will focus on the fallout from the presidential election of 2008 and
apply it to the future of presidential politics, which will next occur in 2012. The
2010 census will produce a different allocation of representatives from states,
showing a shift in population. This reallocation will strengthen swing states and open
up new battlegrounds for political control. Adding to this is the fallout from the
successful Obama campaign which utilized new and different campaign strategies and a
completely different electoral scheme. This will have significant ramifications for
elections to come. In addition, the contentious Democratic primary of 2008 will force
party leaders to re-examine the way that their party allocates votes from primary
contests. The present system, called “the McGovern” or proportional
primary, led to the extended primary season, which drained both campaign
significantly. Had the Democrats used a “winner-take-all” primary (as
Republicans do), the nomination system would have been completely altered, with a
different winner. This will have repercussions in the next presidential election, as
voters decide which system really presents the true nominee. Both of these issues, the
primary season and new electoral map, will affect the way that campaigns are conducted
for years to come. This paper will help to analyze the future of American elections,
and just how we will choose our leaders in the years to come.

Formalism,
Scientism, and Historicism: Law as a Synthesis of Social Time in Legal Pragmatism by
Seth Vannatta

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote that “[the law] is forever adopting new
principles from life at one end, and it always retains old ones from history at the
other, which have not yet been absorbed or sloughed off.” That is, the law is
always taking its cues from the past as it applies general precedent to specific case;
however, in so doing it projects law into the future, amending general principles
toward the novel specificities of its case. In this accurate assessment, we find that
the law is at once a conservative tie with the past and an instrumental. projection of
future social utility. Additionally we find that the law resides in adjudication, and
the judicial decision is a concrete synthesis of social time. Recent cries (often from
the right side of the political spectrum) against “judicial activism” and
“legislating from the bench” suffer from an overemphasis on law’s
orientation toward the past. They fail to see or choose to ignore the radical
indeterminacy in adjudication and the incongruity between principle and case or
between statute and offense.