TALK: Living Better Electrically: Ronald Reagan,
General Electric, and the Fiat of Electricity
Timothy Raphael (Rutgers University)
Tuesday, October 26 / 4:00 PM / Free
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB, 6th Floor
(Download Flyer)

In 1900, Henry Adams, awestruck in the Hall of Dynamos at the Paris Exposition, contemplated the impending century and “could see only an absolute fiat in electricity as in faith.” As Adams predicted, in the twentieth century the fiat of electrical power would transform the dynamics and practices of every form of economic, social, cultural, and political power. At mid-century, three significant phenomenons of the fiat of electricity—General Electric, the leading electrical manufacturer in the U.S.; Ronald Reagan, an adept of the arts and crafts of electronic media and future U.S. president; and television, the dominant technology of electronic media—came together to produce a television show. The story of their collaboration is an exemplary tale of how the ideological and technological faith in “living better electrically”
generated the affective investments necessary for producing what Lizabeth Cohen has called “A Consumers’ Republic”—a commodity-driven society in which capital, culture, and politics are inextricably mixed.

Presented by the IHC’s Performance Studies Research Focus Group (see www.ihc.ucsb.edu/research).

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