Wednesday, November 5, 2008

a possibility of hope?

It has been my unfortunate experience, too many times in my life, to be judged by my name, my (apparent) ethnicity, and even (less apparently) the colour of my skin. I rarely think of myself in those terms, although the reality of my origins are an important part of who I am, of what I have chosen to do, and of how I have chosen to do it. Those origins help explain why, for me, the election last night of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States was very emotional.

I have reached the time in my life when I am aware that I have lived through history. I recall, vaguely, Dr Martin Luther King. I recall, vividly, when he was assassinated. I recall, too, from a very early age, being aware of apartheid (I had a special loathing for John Vorster), and of the white-minority regime in what is now Zimbabwe, led by Ian Smith. I remember being aware of the fact that while I was in my teens in some parts of the world if I had wanted to go out with someone who was white it would have been against the law--just as it would have been for my parents if they had lived in another country. Indeed, one of the reasons that my parents opted to immigrate to Canada was because of the history of segregation in the US (along with the ongoing Vietnam War). I remember the Soweto uprising, the horrors of the South African military gunning down schoolchildren, but also the acute knowledge that had I been living in South Africa at the time I would have been told the places where I could live, just like those living in Soweto. I remember the violence in the northern US around school busing and the efforts--sometimes for better, sometimes for worse--to integrate schools. I, of course, marched--and marched!!--and marched!!!--for the release of Nelson Mandela, and consider myself extremely fortunate to have met, albeit briefly, Oliver Tambo. I remember when Nelson Mandela finally walked free: the world stopped, and marveled. Walls indeed can come tumbling down, and the impossible is possible.

This is how I feel about the election of Barack Obama. In the global struggle for dignity, equality and social justice, we as humanity have taken a tremendous step forward. By electing a young African-American from an impoverished single-parent background to replace a deeply unpopular plutocrat from an aging political dynasty, the voters of the United States have struck a blow for equality for all of us. It is an event that will reverberate throughout this century. As I said to my son yesterday, one day someone will ask him: 'Where were you when Barack Obama was elected?'

Barack Obama is not capable of fulfilling the tremendous aspirations that the world has placed on his shoulders. For many--especially those energized by political advocacy for the first time--there will be, in all likelihood, a moment of near-transcendental disappointment, when they come to the realization that, in the cold light of day, Barack Obama is an American politician. For Obama is not going to fundamentally transform American society, let alone global society. This was never part of his political agenda. He is going to govern the United States from the political center, very competently, but also very pragmatically. The evidence for this is demonstrated by his already well-established transition team, and the host of economic advisers that he has surrounded himself with. As President, then, he will resemble, somewhat ironically, a more decent, more efficient, and more effective version of former US President Bill Clinton.

However: Barack Obama will not forget that his grandmother lives in a rural village in Kenya and lacks both electricity and clean water. He will not forget that he went to an Islamic school in Indonesia and had a lot of friends there. He will not forget that it was social provisioning and public support that allowed him to realize that his aspirations were achievable. He will not forget the empty lives that he saw while working on the South Side of Chicago. Barack Obama will, within the constraints of the political economy within which he is enmeshed, try and make a difference; the extent to which he actually succeeds remains to be seen, for the constraints of the US political economy are indeed strong, especially now that US finance capital is in crisis.

So, while the election of Barack Obama is an event that could and should bring both joy and hope to billions of people around the world, the world has not been transformed by his election. Rather, his election brings the possibility of transformation that little bit closer. It is a transformation that will--and must--come. This morning, more than yesterday morning, there is a possibility of hope.

In Age of Extremes the great British historian Eric Hobsbawm accurately described the 20th century as being 'short', having lasted from 1917 to 1991, the life of the Soviet Union and the world that it ushered in. As the great British comic Eddie Izzard said last night, '4 November 2008 is the first day of the 21st century.'

2 comments:

none said...

Nice piece Haroon - did you see a similar piece by Judith Butler? Pavan
http://angrywhitekid.blogs.com/weblog/2008/11/uncritical-exuberance-judith-butlers-take-on-obama.html

none said...

I wouldn't say a "similar piece" piece - a reflective piece like yours nevertheless. Here is the full text:

Uncritical Exuberance? Judith Butler's take on Obama
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 because of his race, that Obama finally emerged as a preferred representative of the nation? Fulfilling that representative-function, he is at once black and not-black (some say "not black enough" and others say "too black"), and, as a result, he can appeal to voters who not only have no way of resolving their ambivalence on this issue, but do not want one. The public figure who allows the populace to sustain and mask its ambivalence nevertheless appears as a figure of "unity": this is surely an ideological function. Such moments are intensely imaginary, but not for that reason without their political force.

As the election approached, there has been an increased focus on the person of Obama: his gravity, his deliberateness, his ability not to lose his temper, his way of modeling a certain evenness in the face of hurtful attacks and vile political rhetoric, his promise to reinstate a version of the nation that will overcome its current shame. Of course, the promise is alluring, but what if the embrace of Obama leads to the belief that we might overcome all dissonance, that unity is actually possible? What is the chance that we may end up suffering a certain inevitable disappointment when this charismatic leader displays his fallibility, his willingness to compromise, even to sell out minorities? He has, in fact, already done this in certain ways, but many of us "set aside" our concerns in order to enjoy the extreme un-ambivalence of this moment, risking an uncritical exuberance even when we know better. Obama is, after all, hardly a leftist, regardless of the attributions of "socialism" proffered by his conservative opponents. In what ways will his actions be constrained by party politics, economic interests, and state power; in what ways have they been compromised already? If we seek through this presidency to overcome a sense of dissonance, then we will have jettisoned critical politics in favor of an exuberance whose phantasmatic dimensions will prove consequential. Maybe we cannot avoid this phantasmatic moment, but let us be mindful about how temporary it is. If there are avowed racists who have said, "I know that he is a Muslim and a terrorist, but I will vote for him anyway," there are surely also people on the left who say, "I know that he has sold out gay rights and Palestine, but he is still our redemption." I know very well, but still: this is the classic formulation of disavowal. Through what means do we sustain and mask conflicting beliefs of this sort? And at what political cost?

There is no doubt that Obama's success will have significant effects on the economic course of the nation, and it seems reasonable to assume that we will see a new rationale for economic regulation and for an approach to economics that resembles social democratic forms in Europe; in foreign affairs, we will doubtless see a renewal of multi-lateral relations, the reversal of a fatal trend of destroying multilateral accords that the Bush administration has undertaken. And there will doubtless also be a more generally liberal trend on social issues, though it is important to remember that Obama has not supported universal health care, and has failed to explicitly support gay marriage rights. And there is not yet much reason to hope that he will formulate a just policy for the United States in the Middle East, even though it is a relief, to be sure, that he knows Rashid Khalidi.

The indisputable significance of his election has everything to do with overcoming the limits implicitly imposed on African-American achievement; it has and will inspire and overwhelm young African-Americans; it will, at the same time, precipitate a change in the self-definition of the United States. If the election of Obama signals a willingness on the part of the majority of voters to be "represented" by this man, then it follows that who "we" are is constituted anew: we are a nation of many races, of mixed races; and he offers us the occasion to recognize who we have become and what we have yet to be, and in this way a certain split between the representative function of the presidency and the populace represented appears to be overcome. That is an exhilarating moment, to be sure. But can it last, and should it?

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).

If a consequential and dramatic disappointment is to be averted, he will have to act quickly and well. Perhaps the only way to avert a "crash" – a disappointment of serious proportions that would turn political will against him – will be to take decisive actions within the first two months of his presidency. The first would be to close Guantanamo and find ways to transfer the cases of detainees to legitimate courts; the second would be to forge a plan for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and to begin to implement that plan. The third would be to retract his bellicose remarks about escalating war in Afghanistan and pursue diplomatic, multilateral solutions in that arena. If he fails to take these steps, his support on the left will clearly deteriorate, and we will see the reconfiguration of the split between liberal hawks and the anti-war left. If he appoints the likes of Lawrence Summers to key cabinet positions, or continues the failed economic polices of Clinton and Bush, then at some point the messiah will be scorned as a false prophet. In the place of an impossible promise, we need a series of concrete actions that can begin to reverse the terrible abrogation of justice committed by the Bush regime; anything less will lead to a dramatic and consequential disillusionment. The question is what measure of dis-illusion is necessary in order to retrieve a critical politics, and what more dramatic form of dis-illusionment will return us to the intense political cynicism of the last years. Some relief from illusion is necessary, so that we might remember that politics is less about the person and the impossible and beautiful promise he represents than it is about the concrete changes in policy that might begin, over time, and with difficulty, bring about conditions of greater justice.