Latin American Studies Association hopes Obama will embrace the opportunity to inaugurate a new period of hemispheric understanding and collaboration for the common welfare.

Palin and Clinton can be differentiated based on their respective relationships with castration. The phallus is symbolically removed by the Law that orders the mother, through the intermediary of the child, not to give it to herself. Palin exalts the complete power of a mother who swallows her children and who effectuates a denial of the Law's prevalence. Clinton, meanwhile, remains stuck in a stage that precedes the feminization of society. She wants to compete with men. She occupies a classic feminist position: She holds herself up as being worthier than a man to carry the phallic signifier. Her activity is limited to struggling for a place within the same structure. Palin, though, no longer imitates men. She carries out a post-feminist maneuver in which gender confrontation no longer exists—we are no longer fighting the war between the sexes.
—Tülay Umay and Jean-Claude Paye at TELOSscope