The Event of Obama, and why ambivalence is good

Poster for The Event of Obama. Click to enlarge.

I started this post two weeks ago exactly, but just as I was trying to get my thoughts about Obama straight–or, more precisely, my thoughts about why I felt how I did about his election–I saw a poster for an event hosted by 3CT on “The Event of Obama.” So I decided to hold off this post until after that event, hoping that my ideas would have made more sense to me and write two posts about maps. Yet now, the event about the event in the past, I’m writing this and not thinking about Obama again for like six months.

While waiting for the event, I came across (via zunguzungu) Judith Butler’s ideas about the election. What struck me was that her tone was very similar to mine (and it made use of discredited statistical information, just as my original thoughts did). But people I knew weren’t marking out all over place over Obama, criticized Butler’s piece as well. And the critiques are very well understood and reflect perfectly back to me. My finger-wagging warnings were a sort of shield of condescension, hiding from view the fact that I was startled at how simply ambivalent I felt about the election.

The next four paragraphs are a quick recap of some of the questions and positions taken by the two conversers and the audience. You can skip them if you want to get to the part about ambivalence. Or, you can click here.

So the 3CT talk was more of an open conversation between Lauren Berlant and Michael C. Dawson. Berlant started, with a few ideas and anecdotes, by creating a sort of space where youth was important, but that somehow the youth was tied in with a strong current of a kind of (sometimes guarded) optimism. Exhibit A of (an unguarded) utopian practice was the imagined July 4, 2009 New York Times by The Yes Men. Reading the document, we begin to wonder if these sorts of futures are now earnestly on the table. Has the idea of, say, Big Boxes getting evicted from low-income neighborhoods actually become a potentially (or soon-to-be) mainstream position? And does this mainstreaming come with a newly saturated political public, including this hyperactive youth which searches for “Barack Obama” almost as often as “Britney Spears”? Are the Overton Windows finally moving toward me?

Dawson now began his introduction, in which he reiterated his persistent critique of Obama throughout the election season, including a post about Obama’s famous race speech. Dawson tied his ideas around speculation about the effect of the economic crisis on Obama’s chances, in that it seemed like the future of the nation was now at stake. He also mentioned that it’s been a terrifically long time since a (lefty) social movement had won while being tied to an electoral victory. These are all crucial reasons for why people are excited about the Obama election. But Dawson was very critical of those who would suggest that we are now in a “post-racial” moment, speculating that the demonization of those who suggested that the (lack of) response to Hurricane Katrina was racially motivated was later layered onto Rev. Wright and Michelle Obama. Will Obama as President reinforce those exclusions? Or will they fade? Or will other demonizations (of Arabs, Muslims) become central, in a redistribution of the iconicity of race?

Berlant returned to mention the issue of gender, presenting it as a big downer that no one wanted to talk about. We’re supposed to be “over” gender, after all. But she showed how the coverage of Clinton was tied to classic misogynist tropes. She was always too much or too little. Finally Berlant asked if it was possible for Clinton (or any female candidate) to represent “composure” or “cool”–two things Obama does. In my mind, I kept thinking of Jackie Kennedy, which I suppose proves the point. Only as First Lady can a woman be composed (maybe like HRC was a decade ago?).

After this, we moved to the broader Q&A section of the talk. Among the interesting ideas that emerged during this part involved how Obama’s election might encourage a renaissance of class politics in African-American communities. Next, the conversation moved to the narcissism of identity and representation, which made me feel like it would be worthwhile to ask a question based largely on my annoyed election day hangover post. Dawson fielded it and told me not to fret about the happiness people are feeling. They’re happy for all different sorts of reasons, he explained, and it’s crucial to remember this. There is, after all, a lot to be happy about regarding this election, even in political terms.

In any case, the Q&A ended with Berlant’s asking about what it means to be ambivalent about this moment. This is, if I had to do it all again, where the discussion would have started. After all, that’s the good way of explaining my reaction. I was happy that a Democrat won. I was happy that we elected an African-American. I was happy that the UofC gets Democrat prestige points from the election. Talking about this afterward, Berlant reiterated two sites of hope from her post: Obama is not afraid of running on politics, and he is a firm believer in the power of grassroots organizing.

The bad does not need rehashing–the other side is very obvious to anyone who pays attention. Perhaps people like me can find some comfort in the New Deal fantasy that presents Roosevelt as enacting such wide reform by pitching it to Congress as a compromise with what the noisy socialists wanted. And I think that’s the good place to be. But as Berlant writes, there’s nothing wrong with ambivalence–in fact, in this case, it’s something good, as it shows the complexity of our attachments. And it’s fine to be complexly attached.

Perhaps, then, this is a perfectly fine place to stop these thoughts (as I’m still not very impressed with their coherence, but I want this semi-final Obama post as behind me as my absentee ballot), and leave with the meditation on complexity coupled with an activist call to arms provided by Jay Smooth:

I’m cool here. I don’t have to be right all the time.

Tags: 3CT, ambivalence, attachment, Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Jay Smooth, Judith Butler, Lauren Berlant, Michael Dawson, optimism, The Yes Men, utopia, zunguzungu