{"id":9183,"date":"2017-05-17T10:30:51","date_gmt":"2017-05-17T10:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=9183"},"modified":"2017-05-17T17:32:56","modified_gmt":"2017-05-17T17:32:56","slug":"ivanka-trumps-deeply-political-tome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/ivanka-trumps-deeply-political-tome\/","title":{"rendered":"Ivanka Trump’s deeply political tome"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ani Kokobobo<\/a>, University of Kansas<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

By and large, critics have taken Ivanka Trump at her word about her new book, \u201cWomen Who Work.\u201d \"The<\/p>\n

She claims<\/a> she wrote it before her father\u2019s election, \u201cfrom the perspective of an executive and an entrepreneur.\u201d And though they criticize her for being trite<\/a>, derivative<\/a>, out of touch<\/a> and racially tone-deaf<\/a>, most readers have accepted the premise that this is a largely apolitical book. <\/p>\n

Yet as every scholar of literature knows, each book contains what theorist Fredric Jameson has dubbed a \u201cpolitical unconscious<\/a>.\u201d In other words, through the sheer act of narrating, a book reinforces one particular point of view while policing others<\/a>. <\/p>\n

With this in mind, a close read of \u201cWomen at Work\u201d reveals deeply political undertones. Throughout her narrative, Trump advances an ideology of individualism framed by unlimited choice, perfect health and no time constraints. While in many ways, it\u2019s aligned with the principles of the Republican Party, most American working women would probably find her advice for tackling life\u2019s challenges difficult to reconcile.<\/p>\n

Time: The great equalizer?<\/h2>\n

The works of the major Russian writers I study rarely engage with political themes in overt ways. But in emphasizing everyday life, families and communities, writers from Leo Tolstoy to Ivan Turgenev reject the possibility of drastic societal upheaval. Written during a period of political transition and reform, these works are inadvertently conservative; they seem to rebuff the position of the left-wing revolutionaries who sought to destroy the status quo. <\/p>\n

In the case of \u201cWomen Who Work,\u201d Ivanka Trump\u2019s underlying assumption \u2013 her political perspective \u2013 is that 21st-century women live a life driven by personal choice. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou choose,\u201d she writes at one point. These words are perhaps the motto of her book, which presents women\u2019s lives as a series of choices: career, partner, friends and so on. This much is predictable enough. <\/p>\n

As an heiress, Trump is perhaps hesitant to discuss finances. So her discussion of choice is instead framed by allocation of another currency: time.<\/p>\n

This, she claims, is the great human equalizer. <\/p>\n

\u201cNo matter your age, your background, your education, or your successes,\u201d she points out, \u201cwe are all granted 168 hours in a week.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Trump, we each have at our disposal a limited amount of time to distribute among daily tasks. Her empowerment of women rests on the premise that all it takes to juggle all work and family responsibilities is creative time management. If used in a proactive \u2013 rather than reactive \u2013 way, the currency of time allows human entrepreneurship to thrive. <\/p>\n

But in truth, time is no great equalizer. Buried in this time calculus is the fact that Ivanka\u2019s management skills are powered by her considerable wealth. On simple quantitative terms, someone who can\u2019t afford a housekeeper or babysitter will surely have less time at their disposal than someone who can. If a college professor is able to work from home after hours, a waitress at a diner cannot. And never mind the waste of time and money that results from things we do not choose \u2013 like illnesses. <\/p>\n

When illness is a choice<\/h2>\n

Indeed, you would also think, after reading Trump\u2019s book, that 21st-century women don\u2019t simply possess the power to choose how to allocate their time. They also possess perfect health.<\/p>\n

Even as a harbinger of our mortality, time is no great equalizer because we have different levels of access to quality health care. Whereas more than half of American adults struggle with one or more chronic health conditions<\/a> in their lifetime, Trump never betrays any vulnerability to illness and never discusses getting sick in \u201cWomen Who Work.\u201d In fact, even though we know she\u2019s given birth three times, after reading this book you would think that she\u2019s never set foot in a hospital. <\/p>\n

Throughout, Trump explains about how health conditions can be vanquished through mental balance. <\/p>\n

\u201cProactive people are passionate and productive,\u201d she writes, \u201cthey focus their energies on the things they can influence and improve: their families, their health, their work.\u201d She spends considerable time noting how stress produces unhealthy eating habits and how she stocks her refrigerator with healthy snacks.<\/p>\n

These comments, coupled with Trump\u2019s apparent excellent health, seem to say that illness, too, is a matter of choice. And in this sense, her empowerment of women is founded on the same ideological underpinnings as the new GOP health care plan that just passed in the House of Representatives \u2013 a plan that emphasizes choice above all else, including compassion and access. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a vision of life \u2013 and health \u2013 driven by market principles of efficiency and management (what academics like to call neoliberalism<\/a>). In an op-ed he wrote<\/a> advocating for an earlier incarnation of the bill, House Speaker Paul Ryan spoke shockingly little of health. Instead, he focuses on costs and health insurance markets. <\/p>\n

Some Republicans have even stretched their choice doctrine to an absurd degree by suggesting, as Trump indirectly does, that perhaps we also choose our illnesses. As Republican Congressman Mo Brooks controversially declared<\/a>, people who \u201clead good lives\u201d won\u2019t have to deal with preexisting conditions. This idea strikes me as Ivanka Trump\u2019s female empowerment plan played to perfection: a life of self-actualization \u2013 to the point of the outright elimination of disease.<\/p>\n

Operating with different currencies \u2013 but fueled by the same market-driven philosophy of individual management and investment \u2013 both the GOP health care plan and \u201cWomen Who Work\u201d leave individuals to their own lonely devices, with the towering task of making the impossible possible through sheer force of will. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never met Ivanka Trump, so I have no clue what preexisting conditions she has. But after reading her book where she effortlessly handles raising three children, working two full-time jobs and going on eight-hour hikes in Patagonia, I strongly believe that she would be the perfect pitchwoman for the health care system advocated by the GOP health care plan. Both betray a shocking lack of empathy for those who lack choices. <\/p>\n

By using time as a currency to insist on equality where there is none, Ivanka is not merely tone-deaf, but rather advancing the beloved GOP doctrine of free-market capitalism. With no external time constraints, Ivanka Trump suggests that we can all become happy, healthy and wealthy \u2013 just like her.<\/p>\n

Ani Kokobobo<\/a>, Assistant Professor of Russian Literature, University of Kansas<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ani Kokobobo, University of Kansas By and large, critics have taken Ivanka Trump at her word about her new book, \u201cWomen Who Work.\u201d She claims she wrote it before her father\u2019s election, \u201cfrom the perspective of an executive and an entrepreneur.\u201d And though they criticize her for being trite, derivative, out of touch and racially […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":9184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[2065,837,699,2155,1740,1883],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9183"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9185,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9183\/revisions\/9185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}