Yes we can

Lawrence O'Donnell featured this mash-up of Boehner and Will.i.am's "Yes we can" last night. I love it. Boeher is the Bull Connor of healthcare. He is so vicious, you can almost smell his desperation, a desperation that comes from being on the wrong side of history, from fighting a battle he is losing, and for fighting this battle without principle or cause. There is no defense for inequality. Boehner is so much the white man, a distinct embodiment of the privilege of not just ignoring but actively oppressing anyone not like him, and doing so out of an entitlement he does not question even as it crumbles around him.

The "Yes we can" is strong, strong and cool, relentless, disciplined. It's the alternative to Bartleby's "I would prefer not to" or a politics of a refusal. It suggests a forward thrust that cannot be stopped, one that when blocked grows stronger and more determined, but neither frantic nor desperate.The openness--yes we can what?--indicates a politics without limit, a politics that spreads with each expenditure, that exceeds any atttempt to bound it. This is not a politics of a part of no part (Ranciere) but rather one that says There is Nothing That We Are Not Already A Part Of (a version of the Lacanian feminine formula of sexuation). It's a politics that affirms the count and being counted, assured that this is a counting and an accounting that cannot stop, cannot be finished, cannot be closed off. It's a counting we want to join, adding to it as we include ourselves. Far from the objects of someone else's count, we count ourselves. Yes we can.

As I watched MSNBC last night, disgusted by the harassing phone messages and death threats and petty vandalism of the far right, thinking of the brown shirts (as we all have for over a decade now), I started to have a better sense of why Zizek sometimes speaks of violence as acting out, as a refusal (or inability) to go to the end. Were left wing violence to mimic the sleazy antics of these fascists, I could not admire it. It would seem an attempt to avoid or circumvent the forward march, the affirmation, the onward push of the people. It would short circuit the steady aggregation and discipline necessary to become a new people, a people who make sure everyone has enough before some have too much, a people who have stopped asking what's in it for me and instead ask does anyone need anything (the initial level of hospitality).

Comments

[John Protevi]

Thanks, Jodi, this is a great post. I'm teaching Nietzsche this term, so everything I see reminds me of him, but Boehner stinks of resentment, of naysaying (literally), of defining himself by what he isn't, of being the whiny loser who can't do anything than dwell on his defeat.

[SMD]

That last paragraph is particularly touching for me. I've tried to think of a great way to respond to all the "what's in it for me" nonsense, and you just gave me the answer. If people weren't so selfish as to think only of themselves, maybe we wouldn't need taxes at all to get things like this done to make us a little more equal all across the board...but people aren't...

[Alain]

Don't take this the wrong way but this post sounds like you are softening up.:)

If only the dems could offer more than community health centers and closing medicare donut holes.

[Jodi]

Thanks, folks.

Alain--I few weeks ago I almost wrote a similar one in the remake of "we are the world" for Haiti. Anyway, yeah, there is a 'softening here'. I don't know if it's real or an ideological effect. It seems reasonable, though, to think that effective politics cannot be limited to elections v. goon squads, harassing phone calls v. MoveOn, symbolic gestures with guns v. symbolic gestures with puppets. Clicking through tv last night I saw a glimpse of Gangs of New York and the powerful intimidation of a crowd marching forward. They could not be stopped.

[Alain]

Of course you are correct - politics cannot be meaningful or effective when reduced to brown shirts vs feel good symbolism. But as you can probably tell from my recent comments, i am very torn between embracing the recent accomplishment of the dems and despising the content of this accomplishment. It seems I must live with the fact that I embrace both at the same time - admiration for some modest progress but more importantly, fidelity to something far greater.