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eprinting them should not be an issue (if accepted for publication, I'm uncertain if they will need to be captioned with credits). Reviewer X's Suggestion 3. The first objection reviewer X voices is at the level of method: the theoretical approach taken uses the case study of Long, not so much to illuminate a historically specific discourse as much as further prop the theory. In other words, I see what I want to see because my reading prefigures the discourse with psychoanalytic categories. This is an important and valuable insight that, I regret, no revision could overcome without substantially extending the discussion. Within the overall context of the reviewer's remarks, the object seems rooted in a particular methodological (and ideological) commitment: that one approaches texts or discourse without preconceived notions or categories, and then, on the basis of "close reading" or working through the intricacies of the discourse, selects that theoretical perspective that the discourse seems to recommend (I recall this is sometimes referred to as the "organic" approach to criticism). Although I was trained in this approach, this essay comes at discourse from a sort of "mid-level" theoretical approach akin to genre criticism (and therefore suffers similar objections). In my view, Lacanian categories have more to do with Burke's understanding of "form" than terministic screens: on the basis of clinical experience psychoanalysts have seen a number of "patterns" or things occurring among patients that yield pleasure. From this empirical basis, a number of psychical structures were defined and discerned and amended over time. The structures of neurosis, like that of, say, a genre, seem to evince a repeated movement (or seeming causation)—but the particularities of this movement, as well as their unique form of expression, differ from one individual or discourse from the next. So, to borrow Edwin Black's terms, "The [psychoanalytic critic's] training and experience instruct him in where to look, but not in what to see." My decision to use Lacanian concepts to understand Long's appeal came after I saw him deliver a speech on a video documentary; I immediately thought he was "hysterical," and originally my analysis pursed that idea. After studying Long, I changed my mind to the opposing pole: in this sense my familiarity with psychoanalysis taught me where to look, just not what I was going to see. In short: this objection is the objection that many psychoanalytic approaches to rhetorical phenomena have and will likely meet. It is my hope that by abandoning the specification of "method" and focusing, instead, on how the notion of desire better explains the appeal of demagogic rhetoric, I can persuade reviewer X to "go along for the ride" even if she disagrees with my failure to let the text dictate the method. Indeed, a psychoanalytic approach to texts offers an alternative to the "organic" approach, while not abandoning the necessity of historical specificity and context.
4. A related objection that reviewer X voices is that, insofar psychoanalysis is primarily a clinical technique aimed at managing mental illness, it is inappropriate to transfer its insights into non-clinical settings (e.g., cultural readings)—at the very least, because it is unfair to the real, historical Huey Long. Although I understand the basis of this objection and recognize why some readers would agree with it, I attempt to respond in the essay by stressing my focus is on the figure of Long in his discourse, and in texts about his discourse and his figure. In other words, my analysis is premised on a distinction between the real, biological Long (e.g., that person who would submit to analysis), and his representation. No one has access to the "real" Long. Perhaps what recommends a Lacanian approach, above others, is that it makes discourse and the symbolic prior to the subject (and in this sense, Long as a figure is an effect of discourse). 5. Finally, the reviewer calls for more "evidence" in support of the argument that demagogic rhetoric evinces the obsessive/hysteric dialectic. To this end I have added ____ and blank _____ to pp. etc. Reviewer Z's Suggestions 6. Reviewer Z first recommends abandoning the larger project of a psychoanalytic criticism in favor of a sustained focus on demagogic rhetoric. As a corollary, she also suggests that the attempt to explain contemporary manifestations of demagoguery (e.g., Bush and Clinton) be abandoned, since there is simply no room for it. 7. Second, this reviewer suggests that the argument needs to be brought into sharper focus: insofar as most rhetorical acts stimulate the desiring of the audience, what is particularly unique about demagogic rhetoric? 8. Third, the reviewer recommends that the "tortured" explication of need, demand, and desire (pp. ) be replaced with Joan Copjec's elaboration in Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists. 9. Fourth—and closely related to the previous objection—the reviewer suggests that the discussion of desire seems to abandon its "object-less" movement in Lacan's work, which stresses that desire is its own end (not to be satisfied). She disagrees therefore with my assertion that the audience-as-hysteric "never gets what it wants" because what it wants is "nothing final, certain, sure." I agree with this point and have revised accordingly. On pp. I remark, again, the important role of the ruse here, the mistake that a love object is what the audience things that it wants when, in fact, the
Page 1: Dr. Cheree Carlson, Editor Western
Page 5: Hystericizing Huey: A Lacanian Read

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