A dictionary definition of the term “political” might read something like, “of or concerned with government, political parties, or politicians.” Such a definition is not precisely wrong, but rather is outdated and falls short by not accounting for what Nancy Fraser calls “the shift from a repressive model of domination to a hegemonic one.” If at some point we believed governments to operate exclusively through law and the threat and enforcement of concrete punishment, such as imprisonment, monetary penalties, etc., and called this and everything that directly influenced it “politics,” we have now acknowledged the role of hegemony, which legitimizes law and supports the exercise of power.

This is significant because, under the first definition, the only cultural products that can be said to be political must explicitly address issues of political partisanship or governance, while under the second definition, all cultural objects can be traced to a certain ideology—in accordance, negotiation, or opposition to hegemony—and therefore be political.

But we do not feel that we are discussing politics or viewing politics all the time, even if we are, according to our definition of “the political.” This is because even if all subject matter is (at least potentially) political, not all talk is so. When conducting her study on political talk, Nina Eliasoph focused not as much on what people talked about, but rather on how exactly they talked about things: “whether speakers ever assume that what they say matters for someone other than themselves, ever assume that they are speaking in front of a wider backdrop.” She cited Hanna Pitkin in concluding that “public-spirited conversation happens when citizens speak in terms of ‘justice’.” To use an example from the theater, then, we can say that when a director decides to frame her production of A Streetcar Named Desire as the story of a woman who is losing her mind and does not get along with her aggressive brother-in-law, she is actively depoliticizing the story, whereas she is actively politicizing it if she decides to frame the narrative as one example of the devastating effects of an old bourgeois morality, a changing economic system, and the social valuing of an abusive model of masculinity.

1. The second paragraph of the passage serves to

(A) offer an alternative to the definitions previously presented
(B) discuss a revision of the definitions previously presented
(C) delineate the distinction between the definitions previously presented
(D) delineate an exception to the definitions previously presented
(E) describe the inadequacy of the definitions previously presented



2. The author cites A Streetcar Named Desire (Highlighted) in order to

(A) provide a counterpoint to the thesis of the passage
(B) illustrate an aspect of the subject under discussion
(C) advocate politicizing a work of art
(D) illustrate the universality of politics
(E) illustrate a fallacy of a definition



3. According to a theory presented in the passage, a person is engaging in public interest conversation if that person discusses which of the following?

(A) Justice
(B) Theater
(C) Sexism
(D) Economics
(E) Politicians