Savran’s argument in Taking it Like a Man is wide, but deep, and he employs the “reflexive masochism” idea to a diverse, but linked, set of ideas and examples. On the one hand, the self-injurious, rising-above-it, got-the-Right-Stuff-despite-the-sixties straight white man quite simply imagines himself as a victim, but sees in that victimhood a chance for transcendence. But beyond this, the straight white man, in a range of contexts that Savran originates with Mailer’s “White Negro,” frequently places himself in the position of one or more minorities themselves, as, variously, Native American spirit guide, White Aryan Resistance “new nigger,” mythopoetic African folk hero, Rambo native tracker, and so on—an extension of, but not a precise repetition of, the “man who lives with Indians” and/or the Modernist fetishization of the primitive as a source of power and renewal for a dead culture. The “desire to be the other,” though, quickly emerges as a “terror of the other,” as it does for the man who lives with Indians. This is a sometimes-muddled, but ambitious and largely-successful book.
From this: the conspiracy theorist obviously imagines himself (and his nation) as victimized, usually by a big Other of powerful, colluding men. This idea generates danger and terror—a fear of oblivion—but simultaneously, the possibility for transcending the danger, by linking oneself to and identifying with the conspirators (as, most clearly, does Oswald, Texe Marrs, Leonard English), reflexively, but in the manner of Patrick O’Donnell’s postmodern version of reflexivity. I’m not entirely sure this pushes past my original argument, but through Savran’s lens, it’s likely that some portion of the big Other is bound up in conceptions of dark-skinned, gay, or female Others who themselves are alleged to possess overwhelming powers (Red Chinese massing in the national parks, minorities overbreeding, the homosexual agenda, feminazis).
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