what you describe -- collective effervesence -- is common to any gathering like this. so I don't see what you describe happening at an obama rally as unique to an obama rally and, therefore, something that can explain that enthusiasm for a candidate who isn't different.
more on the rest, later, but I'm taking this from your earlier commentary here where you invoke Weber's discussion of charisma with both obama and reagan (pasted below). i completely agree with your more durkheimian analysis -- and i'd certainly say there is plenty of ritual. it's secular ritual, the kind bellah et al discuss in _habits of the heart_. bellah famously developed studies of civil religion. obama plays on that quite a bit and from my brief reading of his past, he's steeped in a lot of the civil society literature.
where i'd say he's charismatic is in the sense of a definition of it applied by a scholar in intellectual history. he was applying it to ken kesey. a charismatic leader tells people who they are. what he does in his speeches is, as you say, tell people who they are by constantly invoking the _we_. we can do this, we can do that, i'm going to need your help, we're all in this together.
clinton, very noticeably, is all about what clinton can do.
in fact, my partner this morning called out from the living room to tell me that, on the news, they were chanting, "Yes SHE can" repeatedly.
to me, this is an interesting difference and is what gets at the heart of what's going on. you were getting at it too. teflobama is telling people who they are -- and isn't it interesting that there appears to be such a need for that? people want to know who they are because they're tired of being unique little snowflakes. just like everybody else.
anyway, i'm being bugged at work. later later
At 10:59 PM 1/24/2008, Michael Pollak wrote:
>Charisma is something that leftists generally hate to talk about it because
>it's squishy. But as Weber showed at great length, it can be an important
>independent factor, causing things that wouldn't have happened otherwise,
>and later being "routinized" into a set path.
>
>And I think you can make the case that this is essentially what Reagan did
>for the Republicans. Democrats often bemoan how the Republicans welded
>together factions that should, in nature, hate each other, but for some
>reason in their case, the antagonistic factions never get welded. And
>compressing a whole line of argument, I think you can make a case that
>Reagan is the man who did this and charisma is how he did it. That his
>one real genius was his speaking voice and facial expressions, and that
>that alone is why people from all the various Republican factions
>cathected to him and have stayed cathected. Even now, when that coalition
>is clearly fraying, the only thing the Repugs can think of is to use his
>name as an incantation. And to some extent it even still works, since if
>you can convince Republicans you are Reagan's legatee, they're disposed to
>like you, no matter which faction they come from. Because you're evoking
>something that is still a part of their identity.
>
>Another aspect of his charisma was his teflon quality which drove leftists
>(like me) to the point of distraction. No matter what he did or said,
>nothing seemed to tarnish him.
>> i'm not really clear on what you mean by charisma, though. i know you're
>> using it in the weberian sense
>
> No, I'm not. I'm sorry, I thought that would be obvious. The Weberian
> sense as developed in Economy and Society mostly only applies to religious
> figures and warrior leaders.
>
> And the sense developed in "Politics as a Vocation" isn't a sense at all
> INHO -- it's mostly incoherent, and where it isn't incoherent, it's wrong.
> (Don't get me wrong. There is good stuff in that essay. It just isn't
> the charisma part.)
>
> The charisma I'm talking about is the more mundane sense -- it's the
> ability to stir a crowd, and in particular, to stir them to feel more
> certainty in their defining convictions. You know, the Elementary Forms
> of Religious Life effect :o) only with words instead of ritual, or with
> words as the ritual. The kind of thing generally attributed to Reagan and
> Martin Luther King.
>
> My argument is Reagan had a huge effect in changing the political common
> sense of this country -- and his charisma was a major, if not the major,
> instrument by which he caused this. He convinced the country that
> government could do no good. A man with similar charisma might be able,
> over the course of 8 years, to convince the country of the opposite, which
> is what it believed for Reagan: that it is natural to expect government to
> fix the problems of education, pensions, health care and low wages -- that
> "yes we can."
>
> He might not of course. He might fuck up in a million ways. But I don't
> think the "watered down charisma" you attribute to Reagan is anything to
> sniff at. We're still suffering its effects.
>
> Michael
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