>
>
> Note the 'post partisan' (and, we can infer, post political) logo
> which mates the elephant with the ass to create a new, apolitical,
> hybrid creature.
>
>
> This seems perfectly suited to the Obama era: the message is
> attractive -- let's solve our problems together without partisan
> bickering! But the goal is to preserve the existing class
> architecture.
>
> The fantasy of politics without politics, without conflict, is
> fascinating. If the US nurtured a functioning technocratic elite
> --instead of a dysfunctional command strata which tends towards wild
> swings between unbounded enthusiasm and baggy eyed depression -- she
> might be able to sustain this fantasy.
>
>
just came across this essay by judith butler. sorry if it's been posted and
i missed it.
/// Very few of us are immune to the exhilaration of this time. My friends on the left write to me that they feel something akin to "redemption" or that "the country has been returned to us" or that "we finally have one of us in the White House." Of course, like them, I discover myself feeling overwhelmed with disbelief and excitement throughout the day, since the thought of having the regime of George W. Bush over and gone is an enormous relief. And the thought of Obama, a thoughtful and progressive black candidate, shifts the historical ground, and we feel that cataclysm as it produces a new terrain. But let us try to think carefully about the shifted terrain, although we cannot fully know its contours at this time. The election of Barack Obama is historically significant in ways that are yet to be gauged, but it is not, and cannot be, a redemption, and if we subscribe to the heightened modes of identification that he proposes ("we are all united") or that we propose ("he is one of us"), we risk believing that this political moment can overcome the antagonisms that are constitutive of political life, especially political life in these times. There have always been good reasons not to embrace "national unity" as an ideal, and to nurse suspicions toward absolute and seamless identification with any political leader. After all, fascism relied in part on that seamless identification with the leader, and Republicans engage this same effort to organize political affect when, for instance, Elizabeth Dole looks out on her audience and says, "I love each and every one of you." ///
and she goes on to talk about the inevitable disappointment (on many sides) that i've been noodling about recently:
/// To what consequences will this nearly messianic expectation invested in this man lead? In order for this presidency to be successful, it will have to lead to some disappointment, and to survive disappointment: the man will become human, will prove less powerful than we might wish, and politics will cease to be a celebration without ambivalence and caution; indeed, politics will prove to be less of a messianic experience than a venue for robust debate, public criticism, and necessary antagonism. The election of Obama means that the terrain for debate and struggle has shifted, and it is a better terrain, to be sure. But it is not the end of struggle, and we would be very unwise to regard it that way, even provisionally. We will doubtless agree and disagree with various actions he takes and fails to take. But if the initial expectation is that he is and will be "redemption" itself, then we will punish him mercilessly when he fails us (or we will find ways to deny or suppress that disappointment in order to keep alive the experience of unity and unambivalent love). ///
there will be denial, but i'm betting on the merciless punishment part winning. her conclusion suggests that's her concern, as well, unless he does something in the first two months of his administration to prevent it.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/11/05/18549195.php