Spinning the Unconscious and the Play of Flirtation in Political Culture

Abstract

This chapter deploys a psycho-cultural analysis of ‘play’ to examine the flirtatious cultures of spin and political communication by focusing on UK political culture since 1997.¹ The study of flirtation as a mode of communication, which operates as a cycle of seduction and desire, is highly suggestive in the contemporary context of late modern democratic party politics where, as in what was known as the UK ‘New Labour Project’, and then subsequently in the UK Conservative-led coalition government, political communication played a key role in ‘wooing’ voters at every turn (Chadwick and Heffernan, 2003). Given the current preoccupation with political ‘spin’ and public relations in the UK and elsewhere, images of flirtatious politicians alongside flirtatious mechanisms of communication have become commonplace as a means to communicate with the public in different mediatised contexts, including print and digital media.