I've noticed (as have others) the impossibility today to say the word 'we' in left company. Can't do it. Can't say it. So, last night night, after a bottle (plus) of wine, I started to bore my friends with one of my tirades. This one involved the fact that Bush didn't win in 2000, that clearly 'we' were in a majority but caved to the right, that the right is all fissured and fractured right now and 'we' have a chance.
Like clockwork, a much more politically correct colleague interjects 'waddaya mean "we"?'
Well, for starters, we who aren't conservatives. We who are not Republicans. We who hate opposed Bush.
Sure, that's not much of a political identity, but the left will fail as long as look to politics for an identity and as long as think of politics in terms of the articulation of a collective identity. We can act as a collective without thinking of this collective as an identity.
To my mind, that's what solidarity is. It's not a relation of identity but of commitment. I am bound to you out of commitment to some third set of aspirations like equality and social justice.
So, yeah, I mean 'we'--'we' who aren't afraid to posit a collective.
I worry about using the word "we." Although it seems to be necessary for rhetorical purposes and whatnot, for social and political movements at least it can include those that would otherwise be excluded. It seems to privilege presence; ie. those that are immediately present or in the room. Last term while I was attempting to teach, I really began to shy away from using the word in order to not diminish the difference between 'teacher' and 'student.' Then, precisely while I was supposed to be focusing on the lecture, my mind would wander off into a debate with myself about whether 'we' is fitting for a course or not. My worry is that it attempts to do away with the difference that exist in any class or situation. I suppose this is a problem about being with others.
Posted by: NotOften | July 12, 2007 at 11:42 PM
Not Often--interesting and fair point. I think there is a huge difference between a classroom and a political alliance, movement, party, aspiration. I don't say 'we' in the classroom. It's interesting, though, that some folks have a deliberate pedagogy of breaking down hierarchies and that sort of thing. I find that approach misleading and disingenuous--not all relations are or should be equal. Parenting small children is one example. A classroom is another.
Posted by: Jodi | July 13, 2007 at 09:42 AM
Good points and all - especially with regard to pedagogy, parenting, etc. But in the end I'm comfortable with "We the people"
Posted by: highlowbetween | July 13, 2007 at 12:54 PM
I have had many negative experiences of such a 'we' and hence am particularly apprehensive to use it. In activist contexts in particular such a 'we' is often wielded to erase difference and to establish a fantasy of unity when the 'internal' work hasn't been done to set up relationships and structures that can make such a 'we' possible. Todd May's recent book 'Gramsci is Dead' has some useful analysis of what such a 'we' might look like. He draws out a genealogy of anarchism, via NSM's, feminism, indigenous sovereignty struggles and post-structuralism (Foucault and Deleuze especially) to present quite a compelling case for anti-capitalist (and Bush, war etc) resistance that is based upon solidarity and difference.
Posted by: Jacob | July 13, 2007 at 11:44 PM
Just because Bush didn't win in 2000 doesn't mean 'we' are the majority, unless you include the Democrats who would have won with Gore in that we.
Based on the Democrats who live around me I, as a leftist, would feel a little queasy about refering to them as 'we' except in the most general 'we' the humans who live here kind of way... never in the 'we' who aren't capitalists kind of way.
Perhaps that is the kind of anti-we-ness expressed by your collegue.
Posted by: John Reeve | July 14, 2007 at 02:18 AM