Staging political power for its own sake
Contenido
Ciertas escenificaciones tienen una prolongada tradición, como son las entradas reales")[37] (imperiales"), pontificales") o presidenciales")). Otras fueron modas pasajeras. La aparición de nuevas tecnologías (grabado, imprenta, fotografía, cine, televisión o internet) modifica el grado de control que las autoridades poseen sobre su imagen, al tiempo que ofrecen nuevos medios de escenificación.
La puesta en escena del poder varía según su naturaleza y la imagen que el gobernante pretende dar de sí mismo en sus relaciones con los gobernados. El poder monárquico magnifica la figura del soberano ante los súbditos, el poder republicano procura respetar, en la forma si no en el fondo, las aspiraciones igualitarias de los ciudadanos. El poder puede jugar la carta de la proximidad o de la distancia, bajar a la calle o vivir retirado tras los muros de palacio, multiplicar las apariciones o hacerlas "caras" deliberadamente. Muestra de ello fue la diferencia en la Monarquía Hispánica entre la rigidez borgoñona de los Habsburgo en los siglos XVI y XVII, y la expansiva presencia pública de los "campechanos" Borbones desde el siglo XVIII.
El problema de la legitimidad del poder influenció su teatralización. El poder hereditario necesita probar su legitimidad (de ahí las fiestas asociadas al nacimiento de un heredero),[38] mientras que los gobernantes elegidos pasan por una fase de pesuasión (campaña electoral) en el curso de la cual deben mostrar las cualidades que les hacen aptos.
Más allá de las exhibiciones más o menos simbólicas o reales de fuerza (castillos, plazas de armas, alardes y desfiles; despliegue de panoplias y armerías), fueron generadores de distintos recursos de puesta en escena del poder la representación artística de las glorias militares (pintura de batallas, Galerie des Batailles")[39] del Palacio del Louvre, galería de batallas") del Monasterio de El Escorial, Salón de Reinos del Palacio del Buen Retiro) o del espacio geográfico sobre el que se pretende ejercer el poder (salas de escudos "Escudo (heráldica)") y pendones, la Galería de los Mapas de la Ciudad del Vaticano -en general, todos los recursos cartográficos-[40] o las vistas encargadas a Anton Van den Wyngaerde por Felipe II). En España la tradición de cartografía al servicio del poder se remonta a los portulanos mallorquines de los siglos XIII al XV, y aunque inicialmente la información, esencial para la expansión y conservación del Imperio español, era secreta, a medida que se expandió con la imprenta el negocio de la cartografía pública (la mayor parte en Holanda), se fue comprobando su eficacia como mecanismo de escenificación del poder con amplia repercusión (al igual que se comprobó que la divulgación de grabados de las construcciones, retratos, fiestas y otras ceremonias regias tenían incluso más repercusión que las obras o los actos mismos).[41] En 1795, Manuel Godoy encomendó a la familia de cartógrafos López el Gabinete Geográfico, adscrito a la Primera Secretaría de Estado y del Despacho Universal. En 1870 se creó el Instituto Geográfico Nacional "Instituto Geográfico Nacional (España)").
Monarchies
In certain societies, the staging of power is fixed in rituals. The sovereign inherits a more or less binding tradition, along with the iura regalia and other stereotypes that he must or can assume when he comes to power.[42] Madame Roland, regarding Louis XVI, said that "kings are educated from childhood in representation."[43].
In the Spanish Middle Ages there were very different stagings of the beginning of the reign, although they usually included oaths")[54] (later mythologized by supporters of pactism) that marked the king's commitments to the kingdom (there were numerous oath churches") and some natural environments, such as the Guernica tree, as well as legendary episodes, such as the oath of Santa Gadea in which the Cid would have earned the enmity of Alfonso VI), the kings of Castile and lords of Vizcaya were hoisted on a shield, while some kings of Aragon were crowned in a ceremony that staged paradise and angels to materialize the link between the monarch and God.[55].
Since the 15th century, the private life of the sovereign tends to be confused with the public one: his birth, wedding and funeral give rise to ceremonies where the entire apparatus of the civil and religious authorities is deployed to materialize the relationship between power and the subjects, who become actors in the spectacle, sending back to power the ideal image that is made of them. Refusing publicity was always poorly perceived. The great discretion of Louis XI, which contrasted with the splendor in which the Burgundian court was staged at the same time, fueled all kinds of rumors. Once the plane of decorum was restored, in Mannerism so many barriers were eliminated that even the representation of naked monarchs was allowed, as well as the classical Greco-Roman heroes or gods with whom they wanted to be compared (heroic nude), encouraging artists to stage such identifications. The figure of Hercules was one of the most recurrent for this.[56].
There is great room for maneuver that allows each sovereign to forge its own image. Philip II, who for his enemies, creators of the black legend, was "the demon of midday", was for his supporters "the prudent king", characterized by his sobriety:.
Louis
The Hispanic Monarchy developed a more sacralized than political image of royal power.[60] The clergy played an important role in the ceremonies, and certain ecclesiastical spaces had a special connection with each of the monarchies: the cathedral of Reims and the Abbey of Saint-Denis in France, the Westminster Abbey in England, the church of the Jerónimos monastery in Madrid in Spain,[61] the Jerónimos monastery in Lisbon in Portugal, etc.
Napoleon Bonaparte, a great stage director"),[62] married motifs drawn from imperial Rome and the European monarchy with personal gestures, as he did in his coronation ceremony, in the presence of the Pope.
It was in reaction to the theatrical excesses of the Old Regime and in response to the radical demands for equality spread throughout Europe and America, that the European royal families humanized their image and approached the people from the second half of the 19th century.
Republics
In republics that respect the forms of the republican ideal, nothing should distinguish the figure of the head of state from that of his fellow citizens. As in Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, modern republics are heirs to a tradition of simplicity that dates back to Sparta and the beginnings of the Roman Republic. Although security imperatives impose the presence of armed forces, similar to the body guard of monarchies, a discreet appearance is sought, in the background. The public and private life of the head of state is distinguished. There is no heir, so the family of the head of state is not exposed to public light.
One of the most extreme examples was that of Gandhi, who developed devices that were both original and traditional (the dhoti, the pilgrim's staff, the spinning wheel) easily interpreted by his fellow citizens and also by the British themselves before whom he came to vindicate his cause in 1931. The ascetic figure of Gandhi is an extreme attempt to match reality and the ideal of the man of power at the service of the people.
The secularization of republican power in certain European countries will lead to a recovery or replacement of religious symbols with secular ones. The question of the limits of the secular staging of power became thorny at the beginning of the 21st century.
In democracies, electoral campaigns are a moment of high visibility for the candidates to occupy power, and they play the role of staging the candidate. Marius, elected consul in absentia, set out without delay to return to Rome to make himself seen as a winner and demonstrate that the gods had granted him their favor. In the 19th century, Charles Dickens described campaign rituals (shaking voters' hands, kissing children) that continue to be used more than a century later;[70] when the teams that manage campaigns already include, along with politicians, communications and advertising advisors (spin doctor, political marketing).
Parliamentary regimes
The staging of national representation in parliamentary regimes reaches a high degree of sophistication in some cases, such as that of the British Parliament (the speaker on his platform, with a wig and toga, arbitrates the ritual confrontation between supporters of the government and the opposition, seated opposite each other on both sides of the House of Commons; everyone has to go out to the House of Lords to listen to the speech, which the king or queen makes annually on behalf of the government). Under romantic conventions, 19th century history painting had as one of its themes the historicist reconstruction, more imagined than credible, of medieval parliaments").[71]
Dictatorships
In the interwar period, the crisis of the liberal State led in many cases to the explicit departure from the democratic ideal and the establishment of dictatorial regimes with a single party and a charismatic leader, with a profile of savior or providential man: Mussolini in Italy, Stalin in the Soviet Union, Kemal Atatürk in Turkey, Pilsudski in Poland, Hitler in Germany, Oliveira Salazar in Portugal, Francisco Franco in Spain, Mao in China, etc. A true cult of personality was witnessed, with the multiplication of images of the father of the nation ("little father", Atatürk) or savior hero (Duce, Führer, Caudillo, Great Helmsman, etc.) Among the African dictatorships")[72] established after decolonization, the Ugandan Idi Amin Dada tried to use similar mechanisms in the 70s to create an image, both before those he governed and before international opinion, of a winner who reversed the roles of colonizer and colonized; an effort in which he was surpassed, until his overthrow and death, by the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.[8].
Paradoxically, authoritarian or totalitarian regimes, while multiplying propaganda images, hide the true figure of power, to the point that the circulation of rumors about the true state of health of the leaders is excited (Soviet gerontocracy with Stalin and his successors, such as Leonid Brezhnev or Konstantin Chernenko).
In order to prevent any failure in the control of the official stagings, an inversion of the situation operates: the subject, from a spectator, becomes an object of surveillance.[73] The "all-powerful" and "invisible" secret services, by their absence from the political scene, construct an even more terrible image of themselves, since they address the imaginary fears of the subjects. This is how the figure of "Big Brother" (''Big Brother) described by George Orwell in his novel 1984 "1984 (novel)") arises.
hidden power
Since the end of the 20th century, the multiplication of security measures, such as surveillance cameras in public places, due to the terrorist threat, is frequently accused of being a drift towards a hidden power") ─cryptarchy) that escapes the control of the citizen─. The term existed previously and is applied to figures with real power but who are not shown publicly but rather operate in the shadows, such as the different historical figures who have been described as "eminence grise". These hidden forces may have real existence or may be the fruit of of a disinformation campaign ─false conspiracy theories, the protocols of the Elders of Zion, the legend of Rasputin, the illuminati, the Bilderberg Club, etc.
According to Michel Foucault, after the fall of the monarchy there was a fundamental shift in the way in which power manifests itself to the people it governs. Until then, incredibly visible to everyone, frontal power soon fades behind the architecture of the institutions in such a way that its elusive nature suggests that it is present everywhere and at all times, although in reality it is absent or weak. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault gives the example of the panopticon, an architectural model imagined by Jeremy Bentham for the construction of prisons that rationalizes the control of crime.
The hidden forces work, therefore, behind the scenes of the political theater, while the elected rulers are described as puppets whose strings they pull, or as unwilling pawns that others move around the political board. In the United States, the breadth of power behind the throne represented by the dynamism of Karl Rove, responsible for Bush's re-election in 2004, is perceptible through the media attention given to the Plame-Wilson scandal"). presidential power, reflects the public's interest in what happens offstage.
Revolutions
Revolutionary periods, periods of inversion and instability of power, also invite stagings, sometimes macabre, when the heads of the enemies of the people are displayed on the tips of pikes. Popular revolutions are particularly interesting from the point of view of staging, given that the people momentarily become holders of power, witnessing an inversion of the representations, as in the carnival, a "world turned upside down", "upside down" (The world turned upside down")).[75].
In the English Revolution, the roundheads gave an austere image of the puritanical and dissident Commonwealth (dissenters) due to the simplicity of their staging: they cut their hair short and wore somber clothing to mark their difference with the cavaliers, representatives of a prodigal aristocracy identified with the "established Church" (establishment) or even with popish Catholicism. These, in turn, exaggerated the extravagances of which they were reproached (long, curly hair, dentelles, plumed hats).
It is an opposition that is inspired by the stereotypical representations of Antiquity, opposing the frugal republic of Rome's beginnings with the decadence of its end. The public execution of Charles I was presented to the spirit of the revolutionaries as the last act of a national tragedy: the fall of the proud monarchy.
The French Revolution also sought its inspiration in ancient history: hairstyles à la Titus, Phrygian caps. The abandonment of the bigwig and culotte of aristocratic fashion set the stage for the democratization of power.[76] Monarchical spaces were "republicanized": place Louis-XV became place de la Révolution, where the guillotine was installed for Louis XVI.[77] Executions were also integrated into the staging of revolutionary power. All of Europe (and in particular foreign monarchs) could see, thanks to the engravings,[78] the moment of the regicide. One of the concerns of the new power was to organize celebrations, in which the painter Jacques Louis David was maître d'œuvre.[79] The Directory continued this policy. The Fête des arts from the 9th to the 10th of thermidor of the year VI celebrated the triumphs in Italy of the army of the Republic commanded by Bonaparte. Ten floats paraded escorted by all the teachers, students and personalities from the world of the arts in the capital. The festival ended with the coronation of the bust of Brutus, an icon of republicanism for his fight against the tyranny of Caesar.[79].
During the Maoist Cultural Revolution in China, we again witness the staging of this reversal of power, with the Red Guards organizing public self-criticism of intellectuals accused of being reactionaries before sending them to be re-educated under the authority of the peasants.