The rhetoric of “The Body:” jesse ventura and bakhtin's carnival

Abstract

The 1990s saw a veritable explosion of “outsiderism” in politics. That is, many candidates running for political office sought to portray themselves as outside the political mainstream. The most successful of these political outsiders was Jesse “The Body” Ventura in his campaign for and occupation of Minnesota's governorship. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of carnival, this essay argues that Ventura's discourse and symbolic action contained carnivalesque references and images. Such references contributed to his image as a political outsider and associated him with the carnival fool's role of protest against the prevailing political system. At the same time the essay notes the limitations and contradictions inherent in politicians' appropriation of carnival. © 2006, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.