“Enjoy Your Symptom!”

It is essential to remember that only the mind can create, and that correction belongs at the thought level…. Change does not mean anything at the symptom level, where it cannot work.
- A Course in Miracles

The New Yorker's Commemorative Inauguration Cover, Jan 2009

My coworker handed me a copy of this week’s issue of the New Yorker yesterday. I wasn’t paying attention when she passed off the magazine so my reaction to the cover was a bit belated. As I ripped open the magazine’s plastic covering, and my eyes adjusted to the image, I was simultaneously dumbfounded and relieved. Dumbfounded because, on one level, I couldn’t believe Mr. Friedman and the New Yorker editorial board thought it was a good idea to refigure George Washington as Barack Obama, or, to convert Barack Obama into George Washington. But at the same time, I was relieved because I could believe – and shouldn’t have been surprised – that the folks at the New Yorker would release such an image to visually signify how our political present heralds a new beginning.

Seriously, I can’t make this stuff up and it’s a relief that I don’t have to, otherwise my entire analysis of our contemporary malaise would seem like a figment of my imagination. The cover image, this “commemorative” picture that you can order online and keep for posterity, is a symptom of a deeply rooted problem that must be corrected at the level of thought, at the level of the episteme, not at the level of the regime.

Alas, the break is always a repetition.

I won’t rehearse the full argument here, check out Firefighting on MLK Day and All in the Family 1, 2 and 3, for that, but suffice it to say that “New America” is only new to the extent that it has fully duped itself into believing inclusionary politics is tantamount to radical social change, rather than superficial rearrangement of the chess pieces. Such delusion is also symptomatic of the root illness. Speaking of symptoms, let me explain my title.

Our friend, Slavoj Zizek, possibly one of the most influential thinkers of our time, wrote a book by the same title in the 1990s. Zizek’s book concerns itself with Lacanian psychoanalysis and popular culture, or the ways in which some of Lacan’s central motifs can assist in the analysis of popular culture. In its strictest sense, the “symptom” is understood as an embodied, corporeal metaphor for a repressed desire. That which is deeply yearned for, but cannot be consciously entertained due to some powerful social interdiction, pops back up in a new form, either as a compulsive behavior or physical ailment. Following Zizek’s shift from the analyst/analysand context to the domain of popular culture, we can read certain cultural objects as symptoms betraying a repressed collective desire.

For clarity’s sake, I should say I am intentionally weaving together two connotations of the word/concept “symptom” into one, where I mean to suggest that the symptoms in question (primarily the image of Obama-Washington above, and secondarily the delusion of Progress) are both indicative of a repressed desire and a systemic imbalance, in the physiological sense.*

First, the repressed desire. It seems to me that the image betrays a yearning for more of the Same, by which I mean more of the same structural arrangements that Washington helped establish. Sure, Washington represents a break with English rule, but such a break was itself a repetition if we consider that the overarching theory of what it meant to be human didn’t change, a theory that had embedded in it both the presumption of capitalist exchange as the only logical mode of social organization and a notion of race that supersedes the race-as-phenotype model.* Yet, desiring white supremacy, desiring heteropatriarchal family structures, US global dominance and the continued peonage of workers are desires that rarely find their way into language. Rather, what we hear is “Change!” This is what must be said in the face of a social interdiction rendering identity-based discrimination not only passé, but straight-up uncool, thus racism turns into multiculturalism, patriarchy turns into liberal feminism, and heterosexism turns into gay pride and queer weddings.

But, the systemic imbalance persists, such that all of the above “social transformations” are themselves symptoms of said imbalance. What, you ask, is out of whack? Well, two things at two different registers. First, the very idea that one world view could possibly get it right, that is, get the description of reality right, is, quite simply, egocentric, delusional, and well, wrong. The multiplicity of human explanatory systems suggests that all are partial, imperfect knowledges with which we may weave a fuller, better picture. Nevertheless, Eurocentric thought universalized its local knowledge into global knowledge via colonization and enslavement. This error is an error at the epistemic level, at the level of knowledge, at the level of thought. Second, the practice of including previously “excluded” populations into the existing power structure mistakes this practical correction as a gesture capable of curing the real problem, that is, the error at the level of thought.

Thus, the New Yorker cover is perfect for its moment, but not for the reasons it thinks. The cover blends the old with the new in an attempt (I’m assuming) to suggest that Obama’s presidency marks a definitive break with the intolerable America Bush II made. But in so doing, it reveals that the break is actually a return to the Same, perhaps a kindler, gentler, more responsible Same, but the Same no less.

The image is symptomatic then, precisely because it signifies a repressed desire not to release the delusional ailment that the Euro-American worldview is The Correct Worldview. But, no one seems to notice, let alone care, that this is the sickness. So, by all means, enjoy your symptom!

Notes

*In Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurvedic Healing, symptoms are seen as indicators of a fundamental imbalance or block in the life force, Chi or Prana, depending on the tradition. Rather than treat or repress symptoms and then declare the patient healed, these healing traditions seek to address the root issue which is the imbalance or block itself.

*See the notes for Firefighting on MLK Day for a more detailed explanation of the idea of Race as a theory of what it means to be human.

Obama’s Strange Bedfellows

Obama is – ostensibly – a friend of gay folks in the U.S. Yet, gay folks from San Francisco to Burlington, Vermont are wondering what the hell is going on. “How could he,” the lament goes, “choose such a bible-thumping, right-wing hate-monger to deliver the invocation at his Inauguration? Isn’t the Obama Inauguration supposed to mark the beginning of a new era in American politics?”

Well, Obama’s inauguration – and the presence of Rev. Warren – does signal a new beginning, or at least the ascendancy of a kind of liberal multicultural hegemony that is, perhaps, more effective than the kind of liberal multiculturalism characteristic of the Bush Administration.

Here’s why:

Obama is a consensus builder. While he doesn’t shy away from alienating some Americans with very clear policy objectives that often lean left-of-center, he is symbolically invested in uniting the civic sphere through what he calls “disagreeing without being disagreeable.” One way of interpreting that phrase goes like this: Don’t be a jerk to people you don’t agree with, even if you really think their views are poopie and don’t make sense. Underneath our differences, there is something that we all share.” For Obama that “shared something” is our commitment to basic American values, values we all tacitly consent to by virtue of being born here and not going awol once we get the change. (Anyone feel the ex-patriot itch when you were studying abroad?)

Another way of reading Obama’s golden rule relies on the extremely relevant insights of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist who bequeathed to us one of the most powerful theoretical tools for understanding our present: hegemony.

As a consensus builder, Obama’s objective is to be the leader of all Americans, not just the blue-few who pounded the pavement for his campaign. That means reaching out to folks he may chide in the privacy of his own home, and inviting them to see themselves as active participants in the public sphere, a place we can call, “The America Obama Built.” Rather than alienate and infuriate the socially conservative block of the electoriate by openly dismissing them, his approach (at least symbolically) includes them, even if such inclusion does not mean he will pursue policy objectives they may find favorable.  To be clear, there is typically some kind of advantage to being a part of the hegemonic block. It seems to me that the advantage in this case is that social conservatives gain a modicum of legitimacy in mainstream politics, which, as we all know, has pretty much eroded and was made a laughing stock thanks to the idiocy of the McPalin campaign.

This, my friends, is how hegemony works. The hegemonic political block is an assemblage. It is based on a principle of association and linkage, or articulation. It rules by inclusion rather than exclusion. It compels people to accept their subordination because it plays to, or maybe plays on, their feelings of relevance and a sense that they are not fully disinvested of influence. Whether or not such perceived relevance and influence plays out at the legislative register is yet to be seen.

While I am certainly not a proponent of Christianity-based politics and all of the myopic, antiquated, and unfriendly ways in which these faith-based claims enter the political arena, I am also not surprised, nor am I outraged by Obama’s move to include Rev. Warren. If my analysis about Obama’s political style is right, then this is just the beginning of a series of strange bedfellows rolling around together into the civic bed.

We lefties would do well to pay attention to legislation, judicial arguments and executive level policy, rather than fussing about these symbolic attempts to bridge ideological divides. Obama will continue to do this. We better make sure he continues to (or starts to) carry out the left-ish policy platform on which he campaigned.

(Ah, and for the Queer Alphabet Soupers – GLBT, etc. – Obama wasn’t very clear on gay marriage from the start. Yes to civil unions; No to gay marriage; States should decide marriage issues; Dignity for all; Ideological cliché, blah, blah, blah. All of this shit means I’m still getting screwed on federal taxes. Thanks, it feels great.)

Oh yeah, I was just reminded by Phil Brontein’s article in the Huffington Post of this disappointing bit political maneuvering: Janet Napolitano running Homeland Security. If you don’t know who she is, ask someone vaguely familiar with immigration issues in Arizona. She’s aweful. Might as well be on CNN with Lou Dobbs. Obama’s selection of Hilda Solis as Labor Secretary counteracts the Janet Napolitano pick. The labor folks love it. That is, labor folks with US passports. It seems the only workers worth protecting are those who are “one of us.” Meanwhile, globalization consistently sends capital on a cross-border errand that can’t help but push workers from outside the U.S., toward the U.S.