"New York, New York": Being and Creating Identity in the 2000 New York State Senate Race

In: American behavioral scientist: ABS, Band 44, Heft 12, S. 2014-2029

Abstract

The authors argue that a critical approach to identity politics posits that identity can be discursively constructed for a group, particularly within a political context. The authors take this general view to study the identity discourses of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rick Lazio in the 2000 New York Senate Race. The following article describes and analyzes how each campaign created an identity for themselves through general strategies of definition and opposition. The authors hope to illustrate the rhetorical dichotomy formed between the constructed identities of the true New Yorker and the fake New Yorker. It will examine how each campaign's efforts to create an identification with the New Yorker as an ideal was, in a very Burkean sense, founded upon a parallel opposition to or division from the non-New Yorker. Second, it will assess the rhetorical strategies utilized to create a subculture of the New Yorker through their discourse.