Like many bourgeois “revolutions” in the name of the status quo, the Tea Party dressed up in the clothes of the past: 1773 to be precise, when even the North had slaves. The sight of middle aged white people dressed in three cornered hats and so on filled me with horror.
The aesthetics of Occupy Wall St. (and elsewhere now) are in stark contrast to this. People are wearing what they wear. This is a spontaneous blow against spectacular politics.
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This week happened to be scheduled as "Boston Tea Party" week in my American Lit to 1860 Survey. We're reading a selection from Alfred Young's "The Shoemaker and the Tea Party," in which he argues that the term "Tea Party" only appeared in the mid-1830s, 60 years after the event, and it did so in the midst of major labor and more broadly social unrest. So, the Tea Party was constructed in a context that resonates with today. Not to mention Rakove's Revolutionaries book that discloses the East India Co shareholder interests and biz interests that supported the 1773 foment, also echoing today's Tea Party movement.
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