Chris Hayes has an interesting editorial on the Egyptian Revolution in this week’s Nation. My attention, in particular, was drawn to these two paragraphs:
Conservative opinion on Egypt is by no means uniform, but it’s not surprising to find right-wingers attacking the pro-democracy protesters and ElBaradei. After all, the foundational thinker of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke, was terrified by the anarchic forces that popular revolt can unleash. After the storming of the Bastille in the summer of 1789, Burke wrote in a letter that the French “are not fit for Liberty, and must have a Strong hand like that of their former masters to coerce them.” In 1790 he took to Parliament to denounce the French revolutionaries for having “pulled down to the ground their monarchy; their church; their nobility; their law; their revenue; their army; their navy; their commerce; their arts; and their manufactures” and warned that the door was open to “an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, plundering, ferocious, bloody and tyrannical democracy.”
Few conservatives would see much of Burke in our current occupant of the White House, but there is a certain core affinity. In 2005, when David Brooks first met the young Senator Obama, they reportedly spent much of the time discussing and debating the finer points of Burke’s philosophy. The cardinal principle of Obamaism is that incremental change at the margins is always and everywhere preferable to both the status quo and radical upheaval. In 2004, before he was the presidential candidate of hope and change, the newly elected senator wrote a congratulatory e-mail to his supporters in which he revealingly defined his mission as “making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.”
This gets at, I think, core existential perspectives on the world. When I refer to a “core existential perspective”, I am referring something that in many respects precedes any particular propositional beliefs or stances. Rather, such perspectives would be like a frame in a painting or a photograph. It wouldn’t be what’s in the photograph or painting, but would be that opening that allows what’s in the photographic or painting to appear at all. And here, prior to any analysis of any particular political events or institution, prior to any judgment, prior to any appraisal, it seems to me that at a very deep and basic level one has always already decided with whether they side with power or the marginalized. This fundamental existential decision, never consciously made, never the result of any sort of rational appraisal or activity of “making things explicit”, is the machine that is always already operative in how one perceives and judges events. This is true in politics, in one’s judgment of social issues, in ones attitudes towards academia, and so on. Always and everywhere one either sides power and authority or with radical democracy (and when I speak of radical democracy, no, I’m not talking about the system we have here in the States).
And it’s here that we get the basic question. When you look at something like what took place in Egypt, do you see terrifying anarchy, law and disorder, and the need for a smooth transition, or do you see the promise of radical democracy? What is it that you see in such moments. What you see says far more about yourself, about your own basic existential orientation towards the world, than it says about the events themselves. Above all, it says a great deal about the nature of your desires. Burke doesn’t come out looking good in his appraisal of the initial stages of the French Revolution, and Obama doesn’t come out looking good here.
February 24, 2011 at 3:50 am
there is a kind of emergent animal faith particular to human-being(s) that plays the role that you portray here, it’s what I try to highlight in my comments on seeing-aspects and unending Narcissim , but I’m not sure that it as much about the natures of desires as it is a reflection of experience/character. And if one is fortunate in one’s encounters/socialization/circumstances/resources one learns to sublimate (not sublate) these faith-commitments/callings/orientations into actions/disciplines/styles that have some meaningful/actual impact on the world. Perhaps fundamentally we are talking about humanity as a kind of expressivism, an acting out (or as Foucault said a fearless speech) that has some ethical/imaginal sense of what is yet possible.
Don’t be too hasty in judging people who are trying to manage complexity and balance interests, especially when daemonic chaos and mass destruction/death is always a possibility.
There will always be competing goods/interests and so some need for compromise and while when looking back it is easy to manufacture clear lines of cause and effect, right and wrong sides, when one is facing the future it’s not so self-evident and so there is a need for experience, imagination, trial and error, multiple perspectives/feedback-loops,etc, isn’t this central to your project here?
Or like BushII are you a man of adamant principles and Godlike Faith?
February 24, 2011 at 3:59 am
Do we really know that Obama holds a negative view of the democratic revolutionary events in Egypt? Perhaps he has been silent (i.e. withheld explicit support) for some political reason. Perhaps he really does support the revolution, but for certain reasons, isn’t willing to or can’t articulate that support publicly.
There is a substantial difference, I think, between Burke’s condemnation of the French Revolution and Obama’s silence on the Egyptian Revolution – first and foremost that Burke was never a president of one of the world’s most powerful countries.
I’m willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, even though I wish he would explicitly support the revolution (e.g. congratulate the people of Egypt).
(Also, as an aside, I realize I tend to be more Burke-like in my existential outlook.)
February 24, 2011 at 4:14 am
Does it matter what Obama privately believes? All that matters is how he publicly handled it. We are what we do.
February 24, 2011 at 4:16 am
…I thought we were never what we do…
February 24, 2011 at 4:17 am
Christian, did you hear the speech in which Obama did congratulate the people of Egypt?
February 24, 2011 at 4:19 am
It’s the Sartrean existentialist in me. All that matters, I believe, is what we do… Not the private ideas we harbor about ourselves. I couod really care less about what a politician says. It’s the policy they pursue and enact that matters.
February 24, 2011 at 4:24 am
…funnily enough as a very regular teacher of Burke (just did it), it would be more Burkean for a great leader figure to take the helm and explain it all to the peasants…maybe Obama just likes the idea that Rousseau expresses: “Let the audience become a spectacle to themselves”…
February 24, 2011 at 11:18 am
But your post puts the emphasis on seeing as denoting an ethical stance, rather than doing. What if we are compelled to do something that is conflict with what we see?
February 24, 2011 at 12:06 pm
what happened to not predetermining outcomes, to understanding complexity, multiplicity, shifting contexts, competing interests,interconnections, unexpected effects, network neutrality, and an ontology of unknowability? and how could you know what the president and his agents did or did not do here, what policies he is actively pursuing, what options/elements he was/is facing in Egypt? If you haven’t yet you might want to check out Bifo’s book on Guatarri/Deleuze.
February 24, 2011 at 2:36 pm
Tim,
This would have been great if it was what happened, but it didn’t happen:
Instead we first got Obama tentatively supporting Mubarak, and then Suleiman. They even sent a lawyer over whose firm represented the Mubarak regime to engage in talks. I agree with Christian’s remark that Obama couldn’t come out and call for the end of the Mubarak regime. But that’s not the problem. It’s not what Obama and the administration didn’t say that’s the issue, but what they did say that’s the issue. As for the speech congratulating the Egyptian people I don’t see how that’s relevant. Of course he had to do that once Mubarak stepped down. What’s at issue are his actions up to that point. Here I think Zizek got it right in his editorial. As Zizek writes:
This is exactly right. Every time there were calls for peaceful and orderly transitions, there was a betrayal of the Egyptian people. Again the point here isn’t that the administration should have been calling for the fall of the regime, but that they shouldn’t have been calling for anything at all.
February 24, 2011 at 2:40 pm
dmf,
I’m not sure how any of the things you mention disappear here. All I’m saying is that we can always only go on what people actually do, not what they say of themselves or what secret essence they might harbor. The example of racism is apropo. Few people would outrightly call themselves racists, and most would express moral disgust with racism. But the place to look for whether or not someone is racist, homophobic, sexist, etc., is not in what people say about themselves, but rather in how they actually behave. As Zizek argues, ideology is in our doings, not how we represent ourselves. Now, of course, the administration can change courses (his response so far to the teacher protests isn’t promising in this respect), and at that point evaluations can change, but we really shouldn’t give credit based on counterfactuals or what he might believe in his heart of hearts. Along the lines of the argument in this post, the very fact that the administration sees itself as unable to do anything but compromise (the endless talk about bipartisanship) is indicative of the frame through which he views the world and the true existential ground of his beliefs. The very act of seeing x, y, and z as impossible says a lot.
February 24, 2011 at 4:07 pm
yes I can see that we have reached a true gap here (echoes of Latour and Harman at LSE) but as I think that they are parallel tracks I’ll keep looking for perspicuous presentations and maybe something will click:
http://www.torilmoi.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Moi_They-Practice-Their-Trades.pdf
February 24, 2011 at 6:23 pm
Jameson says something very similar in the midst of a typically rich reflection on political philosophy as “the realm of sheer opinion”, “par excellence”:
…one comes to Marxism at least partly with the conviction that convictions themselves are formed at some deeper place than sheer opinion by realities other than conscious choices—realities of social class and the unconscious…
“Interview with Sabry Hafez, Abbas Al-Tonsi, and Mona Abousenna” collected in Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural Marxism (Duke, 2007), pg. 108.
I’ll second dmf’s recommendation of Bifo. I know Jodi and IT have posted from recent essays and Ben Noys has written a pretty negative assessment (with which I respectfully disagree), but it’d be nice to see others take him up too. Levi, I see many points of contact with your own thought as you’ve articulated it over the years.
These might be good places to start for those who may be interested.
http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/183
http://www.minorcompositions.info/BifoHowToDealADepression.pdf (PDF, of course!)
February 25, 2011 at 2:35 am
“It’s the Sartrean existentialist in me. All that matters, I believe, is what we do”
You might even say, “it’s the Object-Oriented-Ontologist in me”. If objects are, as you say, a ‘doing’, then indeed, we, as objects ARE precisely what we do. Even more, our thoughts on what we would like to do in a situation consist of their own series of object interactions that are distinct from the utterances of vocalizations and movements of the appendages.
February 25, 2011 at 2:44 am
At marcegoodman:
“Jameson says something very similar in the midst of a typically rich reflection on political philosophy as “the realm of sheer opinion”, “par excellence”:”
Agreed, I think SR opens the door to the possibility of actual political dissection, so to speak, when we can actually inquire as to WHY people hold the political convictions they do. Not surprisingly, most people I’ve encountered in life were unable to justify their deeply held political convictions without recourse to circular arguements and baseless moral absolutes. Sure, one could come to Marxism from being suspect about common political motives and ideology, but what warrants one accepting Marxism? At some point everyone, I think, breaks down and says “I don’t know why, this just makes sense to me.” It could be biology, it could be upbringing, more likely it is a spider web of entangled objects.
February 25, 2011 at 1:34 pm
drew,that’s fine as long as we don’t confuse after the fact analysis/interpretations with causal explanations but instead propose/compose them as prototypes/negotiating-positions/perspicuous-presentations for future engagements/collaborations/assemblages.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/02/24/why-didnt-the-us-foresee-the-arab-revolts
February 26, 2011 at 12:51 am
dmf,
Totally unrelated, but I noticed in your link that the revolts are referred to as Arab revolts. I’m hardly the first to point this out, but the Western press keeps playing the nu-Arab-nationalism/Arab Awakening card despite the fact that most Egyptians call themselves, well, Egyptians. In fact, I’ve heard many Egyptians are insulted by the term Arab because they feel they have been robbed of their pride: this revoltution is an Egyptian revolution. I suppose the next revolt in Iran will also be an ‘Arab’ revolt :)
February 27, 2011 at 3:38 pm
drew, I’m all about teaching people to see/recognize differences, so how about going further and recognizing that there is no such quality/essence as “Egyptian” and that there wasn’t one movement/uprising/cause/principle/concept/force at work in Egypt but varying, emerging, and also conflicting confluences, circumstances and actors in flux and ad hoc negotiation.
February 27, 2011 at 10:39 pm
an illustration of the powers of on the ground, in the mix,reporting and quality editing/narration vs armchair punditry:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/revolution-in-cairo/?utm_campaign=homepage&utm_medium=bigimage&utm_source=bigimage
March 1, 2011 at 11:29 pm
Ah yes, DMF, it sounds more realistic when you put it that way. A messier, less top-down, less narrative driven view of the revolution in which diverse and sometimes conflicting struggles come into play.
March 2, 2011 at 3:12 am
Levi, I believe Slavoj is conflating “Obama” with Biden and Clinton, who did indeed say outrageous things. According to an NYT piece linked on Graham’s, he was very angry with them for appeasement language. (Trying to find that link now.) I would trust the NYT before I trusted Slavoj.