[lbo-talk] Judith Butler on Obama

Jeffrey Fisher jeff.jfisher at gmail.com
Wed Nov 12 16:42:14 PST 2008


precisely. although if we handle this in the european way, we can all be equally civilly united, and then the religious marriage question is no longer a question of legal rights but of religious practice. afaict.

but no, i don't hear people talking this way in this country.

On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 6:29 PM, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com>wrote:


> separate but equal....
>
>
> At 07:26 PM 11/12/2008, ken hanly wrote:
>
>> Butler says:
>> First, let us remember that Obama has not explicitly supported gay
>> marriage rights
>>
>> I understand he explicitly supports civil unions but not gay marriage.
>>
>> Barack Obama and Gay Marriage/ Civil Unions:
>> Although Barack Obama has said that he supports civil unions, he is
>> against gay marriage. In an interview with the Chicago Daily Tribune, Obama
>> said, "I'm a Christian. And so, although I try not to have my religious
>> beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe
>> that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something
>> sanctified between a man and a woman."
>>
>> http://lesbianlife.about.com/od/lesbianactivism/p/BarackObama.htm
>>
>>
>> Blog: http://kenthink7.blogspot.com/index.html
>> Blog: http://kencan7.blogspot.com/index.html
>>
>>
>> --- On Wed, 11/12/08, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>>
>> > From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>> > Subject: [lbo-talk] Judith Butler on Obama
>> > To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
>> > Date: Wednesday, November 12, 2008, 3:21 PM
>> > [Thanks to Lou Proyect for pointing this out.]
>> >
>> > <http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/11/05/18549195.php>
>> >
>> > Uncritical Exuberance?
>> > by Judith Butler
>> > Wednesday Nov 5th, 2008 7:19 PM
>> >
>> > This became most salient in the emergence of the counter
>> > Bradley-effect, when voters could and did explicitly own up
>> > to their own racism, but said they would vote for Obama
>> > anyway. Anecdotes from the field include claims like the
>> > following: "I know that Obama is a Muslim and a
>> > Terrorist, but I will vote for him anyway; he is probably
>> > better for the economy." Such voters got to keep their
>> > racism and vote for Obama, sheltering their split beliefs
>> > without having to resolve them.
>> > 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."
>> >
>> > It becomes all the more important to think about the
>> > politics of exuberant identification with the election of
>> > Obama when we consider that support for Obama has coincided
>> > with support for conservative causes. In a way, this
>> > accounts for his "cross-over" success. In
>> > California, he won by 60% of the vote, and yet some
>> > significant portion of those who voted for him also voted
>> > against the legalization of gay marriage (52%). How do we
>> > understand this apparent disjunction? First, let us remember
>> > that Obama has not explicitly supported gay marriage rights.
>> > Further, as Wendy Brown has argued, the Republicans have
>> > found that the electorate is not as galvanized by
>> > "moral" issues as they were in recent elections;
>> > the reasons given for why people voted for Obama seem to be
>> > predominantly economic, and their reasoning seems more fully
>> > structured by neo-liberal rationality than by religious
>> > concerns. This is clearly one reason why Palin's
>> > assigned public function to galvanize the majority of the
>> > electorate on moral issues finally failed. But if
>> > "moral" issues such as gun control, abortion
>> > rights and gay rights were not as determinative as they once
>> > were, perhaps that is because they are thriving in a
>> > separate compartment of the political mind. In other words,
>> > we are faced with new configurations of political belief
>> > that make it possible to hold apparently discrepant views at
>> > the same time: someone can, for instance, disagree with
>> > Obama on certain issues, but still have voted for him. This
>> > became most salient in the emergence of the counter
>> > Bradley-effect, when voters could and did explicitly own up
>> > to their own racism, but said they would vote for Obama
>> > anyway. Anecdotes from the field include claims like the
>> > following: "I know that Obama is a Muslim and a
>> > Terrorist, but I will vote for him anyway; he is probably
>> > better for the economy." Such voters got to keep their
>> > racism and vote for Obama, sheltering their split beliefs
>> > without having to resolve them.
>> >
>> > Along with strong economic motivations, less empirically
>> > discernible factors have come into play in these election
>> > results. We cannot underestimate the force of
>> > dis-identification in this election, a sense of revulsion
>> > that George W. has "represented" the United States
>> > to the rest of the world, a sense of shame about our
>> > practices of torture and illegal detention, a sense of
>> > disgust that we have waged war on false grounds and
>> > propagated racist views of Islam, a sense of alarm and
>> > horror that the extremes of economic deregulation have led
>> > to a global economic crisis. Is it despite his race, or
>> >
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>>
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