Authority Duck lives over on the windowsill with six other totems, over by a glass container full of live bamboo. I found him in Bob Horsch’s store on Michigan Avenue when we visited the Bean last September. It was a dreary day, and I was rummaging around in the small souvenirs, looking for gifts for a few folks. He was meant to be a present for Laurie, who collects them for her kiddo, but I ended up hanging on to him. (One of the terrible things about me is that I can get taken with gifts I buy for other people and decide to keep them for myself.)

I was enchanted by Authority Duck, with his little billy club strapped to his side, because he’s a convoluted embodiment of power. Power and rubber duckies are ubiquitous. And perhaps this rubber ducky also subverts hegemony:

One remains attached to a certain image of power-law, of power-sovereignty, which was traced out by the theoreticians of right and the monarchic institution. It is this image that we must break free of, that is, of the theoretical privilege of law and sovereignty, if we wish to analyze power within the concrete and historical framework of its operation. We must construct an analytics of power that no longer takes law as a model and code.

Foucault, The Deployment of Sexuality I: Objective