Wear Clean Draws  (’coz there’s 5 million ways to kill a ceo)

note to self: don’t write posts at 6 am. I wrote some of below over course of a few days. Was editing it. Hit Publish instead of Save. I’d intended to put it away and edit it properly. So, very very sorry about the totally incomprehensible material below. Aiyiyiyiyi. will swing by and fix it up when i get a chance. aiyiyiyi. ETA: I’ve edited this properly now. (9:35 am 02.02.08)

On a discussion list, I saw this: Annabel Parks explains her support for Obama (youtube video). It was filmed by Eric Byler, who interrupts Park’s thoughts about 3/4ths in, picking up on Obama’s ‘we’ . Aside from the fact that Annabel Parks makes some pretty vapid commentary, I was interested because Obama’s ‘we’ is something I wrote about recently in response to Michael Pollack at the discussion list, LBO.

Pollack argued that Obama is a candidate who has charisma and can get ‘our’ message out. As I read it early this a.m., I had to ask, “Who is this ‘we’ you’re talking about and where is this message that is ‘ours’? I certainly don’t share Obama’s hyper-patriotic imperializing rhetoric — just as I don’t share any of the other candidates’ hyper-patriotic imperializing rhetoric.” This rhetoric requires the subordination of ‘Others’ in order to create the e pluribus unum (out of the many, one). No matter how diverse are the people who comprise his ‘we’, there are always going to be ‘others’ outside the magic fold of Obama’s description of “our” (manifest) “destiny.”

It’s words like “destiny” and the constant “we” in Obama’s speeches that, quite frankly, I find terrifying — particularly terrifying where talk about “destiny” is taking place in a country where “manifest destiny” was used to commit genocide.

just. effin. brill.

Now I learn that he’s written a letter to US UN Rep Kahlilzad arguing that Israel has been forced to do all it does to the Palestinians. Therefore, it has had no choice to retailiate against terrorists. Conclusion: the UN Security Council should strongly condemn the rocket assaults. He confirms Voyou’s argument that, for Obama, it seems to always be about an ideology of empathy aimed at “understanding the oppressor” with this:

All of us are concerned about the impact of closed border crossings on Palestinian families. However, we have to understand why Israel is forced to do this… Israel has the right to respond while seeking to minimize any impact on civilians.

After reading some of Obama’s speeches, I have to agree with the folks I initially thought were going off the deep end. I thought they were just concerned with the enthusiasm of Obama’s following — how mindless it all seemed, which hardly seemed any more mindless than any other campaign following. But they seemed off the deep end because they were zeroing in on the enthusiasm, which they seemed to identify as something that accompanies fascism.

Well, for me, It’s not that his following and their enthusiasm disturb, it’s that I find Obama’s message terrifying. It’s not any more terrifying than Clinton’s — or any other’s candidate’s for that matter — but he does seem to place a special emphasis on ‘we’ that, in its supposed diversity, papers over the fact that this diversity still requires others.

While some have called the enthusiastic crowds indicative of a proto-fascism, I don’t agree. However, I do agree with Carrol Cox (another LBO member) when he says that Obama’s charismatic leadership could lay the groundwork for a hyper-patriotic nationalism. And that is disturbing. His rhetoric makes effective use of repetition, something most good rhetors employ to their advantage. But in this case, its also Obama’s use that reptition along with ‘the copula’ — an analysis I’ve stolen from Janet Halley, Judith Butler, and Wendy Brown who show how Catherine MacKinnon’s work employs the copula to make causal connections.

The copula is a coupling or proliferation of items, conjoiining them in such a way as to make connections, imply causality. With MacKinnon, you start out with one thing (heterosexual sex) and, through the series of conjoining, repetitive “ands” you end up with another thing (rape) that, in another context, you might not see as similar. But by the time you get done being fucked by the copula, you aren’t noticing the way she leads you through the reptitive copula - and, and, and, and — repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat — pound, pound, pound, pound — bang, bang, bang, bang.

That’s what goes on with Obama’s rhetoric.

The unification of the ‘we’ is a message that pretends there is no enemy, yet Obama must constantly construct a “we” that is always resting on a surbordinated “them.” It is only in the US that someone like him could run for president. It is only in the US that we call out, “Yes we can!” as we conquer adversity. That “Yes we can” speech unifies with the coupling of various social struggles, all over which happened before 1950: the abolitionists’ struggle is couple with the struggles of slaves to liberate themselves from slavery is coupled with white women’ struggle (tellingly: they “reached for a ballot” as if history stopped in 1920) is coupled with immigrants who settled in burgeoning cities is coupled with westward expansion of settlers (as if history stopped in 1920). All of this coupling occurs to unite all these struggles as the same, and all without acknowledging who got rolled over in that expansion, in that settling, in that reaching.

He speaks as if upward mobility or political advancement like his (and those who’ve done the same) is only possible in the US. As if the unifying ‘we’ is completely ingrained in the U.S., inevitable, its manifest destiny — in a way it cannot be anywhere else. Only in the U.S. Only US. We.

While Charles Brown (a member of a discussion list to which I subscribe) doesn’t think it’s possible for a black man to be a representative for a movement that will embrace fascist ideology, we don’t have to call it that. It’s just hyper-nationalism, hyper-patriotism. The unification of the divided we necessitates the Other that must be put down, trampled over, reached over, expanded over, settled on. It must be constructed as outside the United We — and not by accident, but by design. He describes this as “our” special “destiny”.

Of course, Clinton and others do all these things. They just lack charisma — and they aren’t so focused on that unifying ‘we’.

I’m not sure if Charles and I disagree on this, but I think it’s perfectly possible for blacks and lots of people of color here in the u.s. to embrace that. The book I’m reading right now, The Dark Continent of Our Bodies (and others I read over the summer) talked about the way the Black Nationalist movement constructs its we by never getting outside hegemonic discourse. It can’t because the tools of criticism which shape the counterdiscourse of black nationalism are provided by the hegemonic discourse i the first place.

What comes of that is the unification of the “we” by people who have no power — Black Nationalism — still shares the same dynamics of unifying the ‘we’ as that constructed by whites. As E Francis White points out, it isn’t just Black Nationalists, but also a unification of the black ‘we’ that black feminist writers as well as gay black male writers have used when they’ve engaged in a politics of respectability. The politics of respectability, others have argued, tends toward assimilationism and, in the process, tramples over a lot of Others to create a counterdiscursive movement and unified “we”.

What gives movement like Black Nationalism its seemingly progressive edge, says E Francis White (and others she cites), is that Black Nationalists have no power. But other than that? There’s nothing particularly remarkable in its “counterdiscourse”. Meet the new boss, same as the old — to use a cliche b/c I have too much blood in my caffeine system right now. And so nationalizing counterdiscourses bring their own “politics of respectability” upholding bourgeois notions of proper heterosexuality, the proper role (subordinate) of women, proper notions of black gayness, black maleness, etc. etc.

That’s not the content of Obama’s message, of course. He’s not a black nationalist. Rather, my point is that whatever shred of a counterdiscourse is contained in Obama’s rhetoric rests on a dynamic of unifying a “we” that utterly needs subordinated Others — people, ideas, beliefs. E.g., if he wants the peeps and their government to no longer feel the pain of being torn asunder, the way to do that is to marginalize left critique as ‘excess’ — even as he depends on that critique to carry out the unification of the “we”.

yours in jouissance,

shag