Lady Bird

I have to say that I am sad that Lady Bird Johnson has passed on. In Austin, where I went to school, she was always a hovering presence, somehow softening the other LBJ’s legacy, monumentally inscribed in that library on the other side of the University of Texas campus. I saw in my lifetime Texas roadsides transformed from billboard clutter to wildflower beauty. Just think, every road trip we take in this country, down highways of green and petals, allows us all to witness her grace. So long, Lady Bird.

By Noelle McAfee

I am professor of philosophy at Emory University and editor of the Kettering Review. My latest book, Fear of Breakdown: Politics and Psychoanalysis, explores what is behind the upsurge of virulent nationalism and intransigent politics across the world today. My other writings include Democracy and the Political Unconscious; Habermas, Kristeva, and Citizenship; Julia Kristeva; and numerous articles and book chapters. Edited volumes include Standing with the Public: the Humanities and Democratic Practice and a special issue of the philosophy journal Hypatia on feminist engagements in democratic theory. I am also the author of the entry on feminist political philosophy in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and well into my next book project on democratic public life.

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