Let us try to think carefully... | The Blogora

The Blogora: The Rhetoric Society of America

Let us try to think carefully...

Submitted by Jim Brown on November 9, 2008 - 3:15pm

Not surprisingly, Judth Butler's warnings against uncritical exuberance about Obama are dead on:

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.

Link via Larval Subjects

Jim Brown's blog
Login or register to post comments

But we know that...

Submitted by ddd on November 9, 2008 - 8:27pm.

...right? Barack Obama is not the redeemer. We don't get to hope for redemption. (I see, in fact, that the Blogora's auto-spellchecker doesn't know his name yet.) The hard work hasn't even begun....and/but it does feel more possible now to begin it. As of the evening of Nov 4, I am shaken and jubilant, exhausted and reawakened, cautious and open. Disgusted about prop 8 and relieved about prop 2... This is of course no time to rest or disengage or give in to grotesque fusional impulses. Of course, of course. But it may be time to dance a little, Nietzsche style--or to puke it all out, if you prefer--to savor the fact that the Bush years are over, finally, and that something ELSE may be possible...

I keep thinking about this passage in the Gay Sci:

Indeed we philosophers and "free spirits" feel, when we hear the news that "the old god is dead," as if a new dawn shone on us; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, premonitions, expectation. At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright...

»

Login or register to post comments