Schneewittchen

The latest debate demonstrates that Hillary Clinton is best when she's on the attack, when responding to a sense of victimization or outrage. This is the Clinton modus operandi. Let's take the charge she announced early in the debate (with an allusion to SNL), that Obama has been coddled by a fawning media. Let us assume this is true. What might she gain from making this claim during a debate? Her commanding performance last night may gather votes from those who share this perception and thus shift empathetically towards the underdog (if Hillary Clinton could ever be considered the underdog). Feminist appeals might tilt the 60+ set, who feel Hillary's pain, more solidly into the Clinton camp. So there is something to be gained by this performative gambit. 

However, there's another, larger reality that the claim of "unfairness" in media coverage does little to counteract.

1. Her message that Obama is inexperienced (generous) and full of hot air (ungenerous) hasn't made a difference. If she intends to compete with Obama, the emphasis on experience needs to be replaced by one that emphasizes that she is not just qualified, but that she is the right person for the job.

2. Her beseeching the media to go after Obama is basically asking the media to do what she has failed to do: pierce his aura. She really should ask the cable networks not to televise any speech by Obama. 

3. Politics is about managing perceptions as much as it is about action. In the campaign so far, Clinton has failed miserably to regain the aura of inevitability since her defeat in Iowa. 

I remember the fanfare that came with the selection of the Clinton campaign theme song (has it even been played on the campaign trail?): the Sopranos motif, the coverage of the event as a sort of Hollywood premiere. There was an air of invincibility around the campaign. In December 2007, the story was Hillary and the Seven Dwarves. Now, Snow White has tasted the poisoned apple of public rejection in 11 straight primaries. Will she be able to save herself?

rhetoric of the sacred

Barack Obama's oratorical style is widely commented upon. Some view it as inspirational; others view it as empty rhetoric. A simmering mistrust of his oratory has bubbled to the surfaced of the campaign; criticisms of his followers, apparently seized by a new messiah, are likely to become more mainstream if Obama's success continues. One pundit thinks the magic has faded. The bloom is off the rose, the Obama bubble has burst.

*

Without resorting to the crudities of crowd psychology and the innate American fear of anything resembling the collective, it is possible to analytically parse the Obama effect. One good place to start is the work of Emile Durkheim on religion. One paragraph from his book The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) is particularly relevant.

...we can also explain the curious posture that is so characteristic of a man who is speaking to a crowd -- if he has achieved communion with it. His language becomes high-flown in a way that would be ridiculous in ordinary circumstances; his gestures take on an overbearing quality; his very thought becomes impatient with limits and slips easily into every kind of extreme. This is because he feels filled to overflowing, as though with a phenomenal oversupply of forces that spill over and tend to spread around him. Sometimes he even feels possessed by a moral force greater than he, of which he is only the interpreter. This is the hallmark of what has often been called the demon of oratorical inspiration. This extraordinary surplus of forces is quite real and comes to him from the very group he is addressing. The feelings he arouses as he speaks return to him enlarged and amplified, reinforcing his own to the same degree. The passionate energies that he arouses reach in turn within him, and they increase his dynamism. It is then no longer a mere individual who speaks but a group incarnated and personified.*

*

Those who lack this capacity to incarnate a group (which is especially important for a modern politician) resent those who can. Presumably, this capacity is one crucial characteristic of leadership, which is what Durkheim describes in the preceding paragraph. To lead is to move people, both as an act of following but also on a mental level; to coalesce a social consciousness that carries the force of opinion. This could be why Hillary Clinton's impressive resume does not suffice to overwhelm her putatively inexperienced opponent.

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*Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York: The Free Press, 1995), 212.

ready but losing

I'm puzzled by Hillary Clinton. The New York Times quotes her saying "One of us has faced serious Republican opposition in the past -- and one of us is ready to do it again." What I don't understand is how she can claim to be ready to defeat the "Republican attack machine" when she can't defeat an opponent, Obama, who isn't attacking her at all. 

It is also puzzling that Team Clinton hasn't found a way to pierce Obama's aura. Her characterization of him as an inexperienced speechifier hasn't stuck. His characterization of her as a representative of the "old divisive politics" has stuck. In fact, Senator Clinton would prefer more divisiveness in this campaign. Obama's self-discipline is remarkable so far; he has remained "on" his upbeat "message". But then, he's got nothing to lose, he's not supposed to be in the lead.

McCain's victory speech last night prefigured the line of argument he would make against Obama in the fall. It is basically a rehash of Clinton's line of argument. However, McCain might be a more credible person to mount this criticism of Obama's lack of experience. I suspect Obama will be able to draw out McCain's temper (as he did in the kerfuffle over "ethics reform"), which makes the senior Senator look like an angry old man. 

through thick and thin

Stanley Fish has weighed in on the politics of identity that has surfaced in the Democratic campaign. He makes the usual distinction between what could be called "thick" and "thin" identity politics.

We should distinguish, I think, between two forms of identity politics. The first I have already named "tribal"; it is the politics based on who a candidate is rather than on what he or she believes or argues for. And that, I agree, is usually a bad idea. (I say "usually" because it is possible to argue that the election of a black or female president, no matter what his or [her] positions happen to be, will be more than a symbolic correction of the errors that have marred the country's history, and an important international statement as well.). The second form of identity politics is what I call "interest" identity politics. It is based on the assumption (itself resting on history and observation) that because of his or her race or ethnicity or gender a candidate might pursue an agenda that would advance the interests a voter is committed to. Not only is there nothing wrong with such a calculation -- it is both rational and considered -- I don't see that there is an alternative to voting on the basis of interest.

In this formulation, tribal identity politics is thick; interest identity politics is thin, or at least is purported to be by Professor Fish, who opposes what could be called the "cosmopolitan" position (represented by Stanley Crouch).

The alternative usually put forward is Crouch's: Vote "for human qualities" rather than sectarian qualities. That is, vote on the basis of reasons everyone, no matter what his or her identity, will acknowledge as worthy. But there are no such reasons and no such human qualities. To be sure, there are words often attached to this chimera -- integrity, dedication, honesty, intellect, to name a few. But these qualities, even when they are found, will always be in the service of some set of policies you either favor or reject. It is those policies, not the probity of the proposer, that you will be voting for. (If your candidate is also a good person, that's a nice bonus, but it isn't the essential thing.). You will be voting, in short, or interests, and those who don not have an investment in those interests will be voting for someone else.

*

There is an obvious leap in Fish's argument, from identity politics qua interests to interest politics qua interests, which I'll return to in a bit. First, however, does the distinction between thick and thin political identity claims make theoretical and/or empirical sense? Liberalism (in the sense of political theory) assumes thin identity (at best). Reason, the rule of law, consensus on matters of general interest, and other such abstractions are presumed to guide the actions of participants in democratic processes. Unfortunately, such socially dense things like nationalism, racialism, patriarchalism, and the like have led to the formation of political identities in liberal regimes that are much thicker than water. Hence, theory is not predictive of practice and practice has deviated from theory. This does not mean the theory must be abandoned. What needs to be abandoned is the notion that liberal political regimes make no identity claims for or upon their citizens. Liberalism is very thick; it cannot be excluded from the category of a comprehensive worldview (Rawls). There is nothing wrong with this; but it does mean the "universalism" of liberalism's universal claims must be placed in relation to the social morphology of the regions in which it was first imposed at the point of bayonets and in which it flourishes now as a self-evident reality. In other words, there is nothing thin about liberalism, despite the fact that the insitutitionalization of liberal values has tended towards Weber's rational bureaucratic ideal type, which functions without regard to persons.

*

What this means is that Fish's distinction is fallacious before the fact. However, his distinction can be criticized on its own terms. There is really no difference in 'motivation' in the person who (in Fish's terms) votes on the basis of tribalism or on the basis of identity interests: the assumption is that the candidate who mirrors one's own physique or ethnic group will best serve one's interests. Fish rightly makes what I would call the Nelson Mandela exception (since Fish is speaking abstractly): the vote for a person whose identity "will be more than a symbolic correction of errors that have marred the country's history, and an important international statement as well." Except this exception is exceptional: Mandela was both an exemplary figure and a politician with policy positions that were worth supporting. (It is worth noting that there are no Mandelas in this contest between Clinton and Obama). Leaving this exception aside: there is no rational reason to believe people who look like us will necessarily do things in our interests; conversely, there is no rational reason to believe people who don't look like us will necessarily do things to harm our interests. If the use of the term "interests" is not treated psychoanalytically, as largely unconscious (and I think Fish is using interests in the typical way in which it is connected to rationality), then neither thick tribalism nor thin identity interest politics can count as rational motivations or reasons. Hence, the only "rational reasons" that can be deduced must be those identified by Crouch, abstract qualities that individuals, not groups, claim to possess. Interest politics then only makes sense (assuming rationality) if individual identity and not group identity matters, that is, if the motivational basis for voting centers on the individuality of a candidate.  This is why Fish's "leap" makes no sense whatsoever. (Rationality is another assumption that can also be criticized: political action involves a large dose of belief that knows no reasons, which is simply outside Fish's conception of the vicissitudes of identity politics).

*

One could ask why do "identity politics" provoke a visceral reaction among many people, including me. First, because it's not fun to be subject to the claims of authenticity that are a necessary component of identity politics. This Leninism (yes, I used that word) of the post-Marxist cultural left is really a political and ethical dead-end, since no amount of purges or corrections of "errors and deviations" through the confessional mode so popular in some cultural studies circles can ever guarantee the sanctity of the group claim. This has nothing to do with so-called "PC", which is a figment of the conservative imagination; it has to do with avant-gardism with respect to identity claims. If one has seen this in action, as I have in feminist circles at the University of Chicago during the late 80s, then Fish's appeal to identity politics will seem hopelessly naive. (To be fair, I assume Fish is not ignorant of the bad old 1980s and has a different model in mind). Second, if one takes a less personal, more historical perspective, especially one that recalls the existential difficulties that arose during the wars of religion of the 16th-17th centuries, then this widened referential set serves as a good warning against the promotion of identity, of strong or weak tribalism, and the easy dismissal of the cosmopolitan alternative. 

*

It is the nature of democracy that citizens may vote for candidates for whatever reason. (These reasons are open to criticism even if the outcome of the voting is procedurally legitimate). Nonetheless, candidates should give voters something to aspire to, something beyond "getting mine", which is what American democracy does best for those who are good at getting it. If that means sacred identities will be scrutinized, so be it. This scrutiny is short-circuited in Fish's Op-Ed.

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Photo Credit: (New York Times) Stanley Fish

religious illiteracy

Americans love that old time religion. Apparently, many don't know some the basics. 

Eros and the Skull

Insolent Eros,

      seated on the skull

     of Humanity

     as if on a throne,

gaily blows bubbles

     they rise, one after

     another, as if

     to rejoin the worlds

in the stratosphere.

     Frail and luminous

     each globe as it mounts

     explodes, spattering

its tenuous soul

     like a golden dream

     I hear the skull moan

     as each one shatters:

'When will this callous,

     ridiculous game

     of yours be over?

     What your cruel breath

scatters into air,

     Monster Murderer,

     is my very flesh

     and blood - gray matters!'

Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

ISAs of race

There was a time when I thought Althusser was the sort of academic Marxist whose theory removed the possibility of agency, action, freedom, etc. Under the influence of E. P. Thompson's polemic aimed at French Marxism (namely, structuralist Marxism), The Poverty of Theory, and journal wars with the New Left Review, I didn't even bother to read M. Althusser. Later, during a structuralist epiphany, Althusser became required reading, especially for anyone with a sympathetic engagement with Judith Butler's writings. The essay on Ideological State Apparatuses* is one of those classic works that will endure long after Thompson's theoretically weak broadsheet becomes a mere archival footnote in the history of 2oth century British Marxism. 

*

The most significant part of this essay is the section on ideology in which Althusser introduces a general theory of ideology and the concept of interpellation. These two elements of the theory of ISAs is pertinent with regard to race and racial profiling as it arises in the University. 

Thesis I: Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence. (...) However, while admitting that they do not correspond to reality, i.e., that they constitute an illusion, we admit that they do make allusion to reality and that they need only be 'interpreted' to discover the reality of the world behind their imaginary representation of the world (ideology = illusion/allusion).

Let's think with Althusser's definition. There is no "thing" called race, it is an imaginary relationship people entertain in relation to their existence. Let's loosen the typical Marxist definition of "real conditions" for a moment. What matters here is precisely the notion of imaginary. Althusser accords a reality to this imaginary in the sentence after the ellipses: ideologies "do make an allusion to reality." If we consider race to fall under this definition of ideology, then we can say that when the University engages in racial profiling, it is instituting (or participates in the institution of) an imaginary relationship between administrators, staff, faculty, and students and their real conditions of existence. What is alluded to is (and here I'll surely violate Marxism 101) another imaginary set of relations, namely race relations between racial groups. Race, race relations, and racial groups are imaginary: they form an ideational circuit, which is both the means for racial profiling and the condition of racial profiling. Thus, and this is where I deviate from Marxist orthodoxy, the first reality to which race -- as ideology -- makes an allusion is this ideational circuit. The second reality to which race makes an allusion is the institution of racialist practices, the concrete social actions that make race -- which is an idea -- more than an idea. Examples of this second reality include support groups and diversity reports that quantify racial membership.

To be sure, Althusser comes close to this argument:

Thesis II: Ideology has a material existence. (...) ideology always exists in an apparatus, and its practice, or practices. This existence is material.

If he believes in God, he goes to Church to attend Mass, kneels, prays, confesses, does penance (...)

Where I differ is this: when it comes to race as an ideology, the idea of race can exist without any material existence. It is merely fortuitous that a material existence is found for it. In other words, the idea of race is always in search of an object (in search of objectification), but does not depend on the acquisition of an object. Kneeling and praying, bowing and scraping before the altar of race does not call race into material existence. 

*

The concept of interpellation is also useful for analysis of what racial profiling at the University entails.

I say: the category of the subject is constitutive of all ideology, but at the same time and immediately I add that the category of the subject is only constitutive of all ideology insofar as all ideology has the function (which defines it) of 'constituting' concrete individuals as subjects. In the interaction of this double constitution exists the functioning of all ideology, ideology being nothing but its functioning in the material forms of existence of that functioning.

This is a good description of what racial profiling does: it constitutes racial subjects. Althusser's example of the policeman who hails a person in the street is an apt account of how racial profiling functions in practice:

I shall then suggest that ideology 'acts' or 'functions' in such a way that it 'recruits' subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or 'transforms' the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) by the precise operation which I have called interpellation or hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace everyday police (or other) hailing: 'Hey you there!'

Assuming that the theoretical scene I have imagined takes place in the street, the hailed individual will turn around. By this mere one-hundred-and-eighty-degree physical conversion, he becomes a subject. Why? Because he has recognized that the hail was 'really' addressed to him, and that 'it was really him who was hailed' (and not someone else). 

Following this argument, when an individual is interpellated (or hailed) by an administrator to join a support group or engage in outreach or the like, this individual is turned into a racial subject. Racial profiling, as an example of interpellation, functions as ideology.

*

But what if the person doesn't turn around when the police officer shouts 'Hey you there!'? What if the University employee fails to respond to acts of interpellation? Is this 'act of resistance' or exercise of so-called 'agency' really effective against the ISAs of race? The short answer is: no. The ISAs of race cannot be abolished through individual acts. 

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Louis Althusser, "Ideology and ideological state apparatus (notes towards an investigation)", Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York: The Monthly Review Press, 2001), 85-126

rockets redglare

I'm watching the Congressional hearings on whether Roger Clemens used HGH. My unscientific observation is that the Republicans are critical of Clemens's accuser (McNamee), and the Democrats are critical of Clemens. Perhaps Clemens is a Republican. If not, I can't explain the self-righteous tone of some of the Democratic questioners, or the Republicans' impunging of McNamee's integrity. 

*

On the larger issue of performance enhancing drugs: if there were a drug that would enhance intellectual ability, I would surely use it. Actually, there is one [login required], but I am not using it. Yet. And I doubt whether anyone would find it problematic if I did, as long as it was legal. We hold the athletic world as a world apart, a world in which purity must be upheld, in which only hard work and talent counts. In other words, the world of sports is the perfect meritocracy. Or is it? Athletes are not all equal physically. Hence, those who are lacking something seek to make up for it with guile or by enhancing their physical skills. Most do it within the limits of legality and/or fairness prescribed by the various athletic federations and leagues. But is this idea of sports as a world apart worth defending as such. Who really cares if any athlete is a 'juicer' or blood doper? Why not open up these means of enhancing performance (as long as they meet legal standards) to all athletes. What explains the fact that athletes are forbidden by law and legal rules to use steroids, yet they are free to smoke cigarettes? Or drink coffee? Both nicotine and caffeine are known stimulants. Athletes in poorer nations do not have access to the same quality training as do athletes from wealthy nations. Yet there is no effort to level the economic playing field.

*

Projection is a fact of psychical life; hypocrisy is a fact of ethical life; and athletics is a place where both these facts meet. American college athletes are amateurs. Nonetheless the universities for whom they perform reap financial rewards far beyond the cost of athletic scholarships. The Congress and health officials warn of the dangers of steroids and HGH. Nonetheless, baseball fans flock to stadiums in record numbers to watch suspected "juicers" perform. Sportswriters engage in self-righteous denunciations of athletes suspected of using performance enhancing drugs on the back pages of American newspapers, while eschewing the professional journalistic ethics of their erstwhile colleagues, whose hard news reportage appears on the front pages of newspapers. Is there a solution to this? Of course: less purity and more reality; less moralizing and more analyzing. 

republican purge trials

The Washington Post is reporting that Mitt Romney "won" a straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference (35% to 34%) over John McCain. It is amusing to see Republicans engaged in identity politics. It will be interesting to see if McCain tries to pass the "true conservative" litmus test. If he doesn't, perhaps we'll remember 2008 as the year of the Great Purges, with Limbaugh and Dobson competing to become the American Vyshinsky.

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photo credit: (Wikipedia) Andrey Vyshinsky

chromosomes or melanin

First it was Gloria Steinem; now it's Robin Morgan who is calling global feminism to order. It is time to support Hillary Rodham.

Me? I support Hillary Rodham because she's the best qualified of all candidates running in both parties. I support her because her progressive politics are as strong as her proven ability to withstand what will be a massive right-wing assault in the general election. I support her because she's refreshingly thoughtful, and I'm bloodied from eight years of a jolly "uniter" with ejaculatory politics. I needn't agree with her on every point. I agree with the 97 percent of her positions that are identical with Obama's -- and the few where hers are both more practical and to the left of his (like health care). I support her because she's already smashed the first-lady stereotype and made history as a fine senator, and because I believe she will continue to make history not only as the first US woman president, but as a great US president.

As for the "woman thing"?

Me, I'm voting for Hillary not because she's a woman -- but because I am.

*

So there is a gender gap among Democrats. According to exit polls (certainly, a precise science), older women go for Rodham, white men go for Obama (other gaps: young people for Obama, latinos for Rodham, lower income for Rodham, higher income for Obama, lower education for Rodham, higher education for Obama, blacks for Obama, labor for Rodham). Identity politics 101. Hence the Democrats face two choices with historical implications. Either nominate a woman or a black male. Morgan, picking up Rodham's talking points, finds her more qualified. That's the bottom line; but above the line is the resentment of years of taking a back seat, of deferring, of being bypassed by someone younger, etc., und so weiter...Moreover, the nomination of Rodham is an opportunity to stick it to the Republican hatemeisters. On these points, one can agree with Morgan. But the last sentence sticks in the mind: vote for Rodham because of your chromosomes, not because of Rodham's.

*

Is this what Second Wave Feminism has come to? The Second Wave, splintered by the divide between cultural feminists and sex radicals and the divide between "women of color" and "white feminists", has become virtually invisible as a political-cultural force (just the opposite of the presence of feminist theory as an intellectual force in the academy). I once posed a question in an undergraduate classroom: who among you identifies as a feminist? Not more than five hands went up among the sixty in attendance. Are we now in a post-feminist situation in which the recriminations of the 1980s and 1990s, and the decades of anti-feminist conservative backlash, have made the idea of feminism itself an impossibility? The glass ceiling remains and masculinist symbolic and physical violence continues to define and restrict the social space for women. What does a Rodham presidency portend for changing these conditions? 

*

What is interesting in this season of XX, XY and melanin sufficiency is that presumed "loyalties" have been affirmed and transcended. Black politicos are barracking for Rodham; Women politicos are barracking for Obama. Is this progress? I view it as such. I fall on the side of transcendence rather than strategic essentialism. It is possible to deconstruct gender and racial profiling without remaining within the episteme. Rodham and Obama have mostly sought to do this. It would be nice if their supporters would get this clue.

*

Women's Liberation Front 1987 (for Alison)+

Against the grand conspiracy

-- essentialist philosophy of history

Of primordial white-male supremacy

-- got to keep it away from me

Fists punch through the cloudy sky

--I'll seek my salvation

To keep the dogma free of lies

-- in a hormone-free situation

United by anatomy

-- I won't deny the difference

Become the wrath of society

-- but won't inflate its significance

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+ Ascona (1987)

one giant step for Manning?

Politics is football carried on by other means. Thus, on Super Tuesday an overdog faces off against an underdog, the Perfect Team confronts the wild card qualifier, the scheming genius tangles with the likable little brother. Let's prognosticate. 

*

The underdog only recently arrived on the scene. A first round pick in the 1994 draft, he impressed the scouts with a verbal vertical leap that was off the charts. Following in the footsteps of a Presidential Hall of Famer (Lincoln), he promised to be the Great Emancipator of American politics; he would free the political system from the slavery of lobbyists and the negativity of past decades. After beginning the campaign with a long drive, he scored first (a field goal in Iowa). Yet, the game has become a battle for field position, with setbacks (Nevada) and one turnover (New Hampshire) in the early going. But now, the young quarterback is behind by 4 percentage points, and the final quarter is underway. Will this precocious challenger be able to "shock the world" in the waning seconds of the game?

*

What about the opponent, the leader who was ready to win on day one, the one who could withstand scandal, and go on to run up the score on hapless opponents? Will her hubris to go for it (unleashing long bomb ex-President Bill) on fourth down -- in an obvious field goal situation in South Carolina -- come back to haunt her? Surely, she has the game plan and experience to pull off the perfect season. Or, in defeat, will she sprint off the field in the final seconds, offering begrudging praise to the underdog ("he got the endorsements, we didn't.")?

*

I like something about both the young quarterback and the evil genius coach. Everyone likes an underdog and the audacity of his bid for the highest office inspires hope. I also like the grey-hoodied coach, plain but ruthlessly efficient, destroying opponents and treating each victory as inevitable. How does one pick between them: the improvised brilliance of the underdog's the hail mary pass towards destiny or the meticulously orchestrated defensive plan of the old coach intended to smash the upstart in the mouth?

*

The Final Score....right after this commercial break.

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photo credits: Eli Manning (Newsday); Bill Belichick (The Onion)

so happy together

Clinton and Obama played nice in last night's debate, which was marked by politeness and civility. Why? Because they feel one of them will win in the fall. Both candidates can afford to be civil. There is a lot more anxiety on the Republican side, evidenced by the vitriolic arguments over conservative credentials: niceness is a luxury that neither Romney nor McCain can afford. The Democratic dawn meets the Republican decline? Or is it? I worry the Democrats are over-confident.