responses and appeals

The previous post has blossomed into a fascinating testament to the limitations and possibilities of political discourse. Although there is on some level a shared desire for concrete specificity, I am left with the impression that to prefer the nation over the local and vice versa (like all aesthetic choices, this preference is subject to specific situations and within the practices of everyday life have a multiplicity of expressions. E.g. one can prefer national news media to local media- they are in fact as A points out nearly the same- and at the same time one can prefer local restaurants to national chains) is to produce a set of binary oppositions that in turn produce a preference for abstraction. Thankfully no one here is making absolutist claims of an either or logic but I do see a rich spectrum of abstraction and specificity being produced through this topic. And this is indeed a very good thing.

The issue as I see DM’s responses pointing to is not however any demand that politics should adhere to his preferences which in any event include both the local and the national- he does not oppose these in a binary way in these responses- but a call for the abstractions and mediations of the national spatial-temporal scale of politics to engage the concrete social realities of what is sometimes called the local level- but perhaps would better be called the everyday level. Here in our own everyday practices which include occasional blog postings, we can address that there may be a kind of pleasure derived from our speculations on politics- whether over how to best appeal to the american people in TN’s personal preference for the national, how to appeal to reason in A’s responses, or how to appeal to place in the construction of our identities in DM’s responses. These are just a few of the many pleasures we derive from our everyday practices but certainly there are more when we consider how rich the lives we lead are. That we live in cities must in some way contribute to the shape of these everyday practices. That we travel through the spaces of these places and encounter myriad individuals and material forms may indeed shape the contours of our everyday practices. But to ask ourselves why it is that these spaces do not elicit identifications as pleasurable as the national- an object of identification only possible through abstraction and mediation- is not to abandon the national.

I think for each of us who have the privilege to speculate on these and other matters of pleasure, some attention should be paid to our own individual everyday practices, if only for the new pleasures one may discover there. It seems deeply irrational to oppose politics to these practices as if politics could only survive through an absolute separation from the foundations of our everyday lives. Furthermore, this separation and abstraction of politics from everyday reality is all the more dangerous when we begin to speculate on the political desires of other social entities including marginalized others. Without attention to the social realities of inequality on the level of everyday practices we risk appropriating and instrumenalizing their existence as figures or mere representations of the powerless. This does not mean we should not attempt to understand, engage and confront inequalities as they are experienced by others but rather that we must directly engage and confront these inequalities from the everyday practices that produce them. Proceeding case by case, site by site, level by level the specificities of these experiences and practices of inequality will demand a rigorous engagement with both local, national and increasingly transnational scales of political practice. The verb to appeal (which occupies a mediatory role between an abstract politics and practical realities) represents in its current usage the purely aesthetic dimension of politics as in the following definition:

“9. a. To address oneself, specially and in expectation of a sympathetic response, to some principle of conduct, mental faculty, or class of persons. Also, to be attractive or pleasing to (a person).To ‘make an appeal’; to be attractive.”

This pleasure it would seem has a particular direction when it comes to the abstraction of politics from everyday practice. By speculating on the attractiveness of particular candidates, policies and values to “the american people” or “the powerless”, the pleasure seems to dwell with the speculator, much in the same way real estate speculators thrive in the debates over public space and urban renewal.

The historical origins of this verb according to the OED in fact demonstrates the power differential it once (and perhaps still does) defined:

“1. To call (one) to answer before a tribunal; in Law: To accuse of a crime which the accuser undertakes to prove. spec. a. To impeach of treason. b. To accuse an accomplice of treason or felony. c. To accuse of a heinous crime whereby the accuser has received personal injury or wrong, for which he demands reparation.”

It seems the directional orientation of contemporary appeals to the american people should indeed be reversed, and it is those agents of abstraction-the politicians and their corporate bosses- who should be called to answer before “the american people” in this original form of appeal. But at the same time I recognize within the logic of this request I have just made a sense of an ancient danger. For this is indeed a call historically made by fascism in the moment of its ascendancy as it rips democratic potential from people just as they come into awareness of their collective body. I think the question of mediation returns most forcefully at this moment between fascism and actual democracy. I think this moment depends upon the degree that the abstractions and mediations of the ‘nation’ contribute or rob a people of their ability to practice autonomous forms of community. If our democracy is as fine as the liberal and conservative parties’ ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ political discourse would have us believe our nation is, then we may indeed be at the threshold of a more democratic state. But when I reflect on all that I encounter in my everyday practices, traveling through the material and virtual spaces that occupy my time, there are many serious limitations to accepting their rhetoric at face value.

At the same time, as TN, A, GreenMedallion and DM have pointed out in different ways in posts here, we are also facing incredible new possibilities for autonomous forms of democratic communities. I would suspect these possibilities would become more concrete realities if we took a closer look at the level of practice in order to appropriate the networks of mediation as they are inscribed in space and time. Looking at the places and practices of our everyday lives we may encounter the national and transnational contours of the local in unexpected ways. But perhaps ultimately this is a matter of taste, in which case we really cannot separate aesthetics and politics today.