Critchley: What’s Left After Obama?

This is an excerpt from a lovely, thoughtful essay by Simon Critchley. Read the whole thing here: What’s Left After Obama? | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters.

What are the possible consequences of Obama’s victory? I think there are at least two possibilities that circle in a perhaps melancholy dialectic. One possibility – which is highly unlikely, but at least conceivable – is that the change of regime will lead to local and diverse forms of popular politicization which perhaps might place in question the current socio-economic doxa. On this view, emboldened by Obama’s victory, various groups might accelerate their political activity around issues such as immigrant rights, union representation or corporate greed. What Obama’s victory might unleash is a sequence of progressive radicalizations inside the US and perhaps outside as well that would act as a serious irritant to the usual business of the state or the usual state of business.

The second possibility is the reverse, namely that the popular force that has been mobilized around Obama’s presidential campaign simply exhausts itself in its governmental victory. On this view, once Obama has been elected, citizens can switch off politically and sit back and watch how well his administration does. Politics becomes reduced to a spectacle of media and governmental representation. Furthermore, this possibility is undoubtedly the one favoured by the Obama campaign itself, which explains the somber, slightly disappointed tone to Obama’s speech on the night of his victory: ‘The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term’. On this view, the rhetoric of change (‘Together we can change the country and change the world’) was simply what it took to get people mobilized. Once the victory is secure, there must be no further mobilizations at the popular level. All must henceforth be mediated through the apparatus of government. Politics as the experience of a people suddenly present to itself and aware of its awesome power has to die at the precise moment when a representative government is elected.

Comments

[kurto]

I hope the orgy of infotainment on Obama subsides and is replaced by substantive policy discussions.

At least people can identify with Obama. Whether that will be translated into civic action remains to be seen. His DLC cabinet is disheartening to see.

I'm hoping to see increased popular activism due to the fact that it'll be harder for the administration to blame the 'opposition' for lack of progress.

[dave]

Critchley raises a lot of good points, but his statement that Obama is "undoubtedly" against popular mobilisation post-election is flat out wrong.

One of the most inspiring and important points Obama made in his acceptance speech on November 4 indicated precisely the opposite:

"What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you."

The statement is vital in contextualising the possibilities opened up by his election - that the change sought by the mass mobilisation lies not in the election of Obama but in collective action itself. Obama also points to the precariousness of this moment - he makes clear that this hope for change can only be fully realised by the continuation of collective action, "that government can't solve every problem."

And needless to say, Obama's much publicised background as a community organiser
would also seem to refute Critchley's point.