Radical Social Change in the United States: Badiou's Apostle and the Post-Factual Moment

336 Pages·2017·2.17 MB·English

by  Joanna Swanger (auth.)

G E IN THE U
N NI
A T
H E
C D

L S
A T
A
I
C T
E
O
S
S w a n g e r
AL J o a n n a S nt
C e
m
I
D o
M
A
R al
u
ct
a
Badi o st-F
ou’s Apostle and t h e P
Radical Social Change in the United States
Joanna   Swanger
Radical Social Change
in the United States
Badiou’s Apostle and the Post-Factual Moment
Joanna   Swanger
Earlham College
Richmond
Indiana , USA
ISBN 978-3-319-39980-5 ISBN 978-3-319-39981-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-39981-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016957563
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2 017
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
Cover design by Samantha Johnson
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature
The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the help of those who
provided me with a quiet place to ponder and occasional bonhomie dur-
ing my stay in the Smoky Mountains in 2014: thank you to Laura Murrill,
the Apple Tree House, Erin Rubin McGleenan, Diarmaid McGleenan,
and Owen McGleenan. Rosalyn Endlich’s work in the Peace & Global
Studies (PAGS) offi ce at Earlham College not only made my sabbatical
possible, but she also offered steady enthusiasm for the project. Jonathan
Diskin was also a stalwart presence and an encouraging early reader. The
project received fi nancial assistance through a New Directions grant from
the Great Lakes Colleges Association and from the Ford-Knight program
at Earlham College. My Ford-Knight students—David Aristizábal Urrea,
Noor Balbaky, Maya Cooper, Michael Gottlieb, Kirsten Leloudis, and
Marcus Garvey Waters-Bonner—ably assisted me in the early stages. A
special thanks to my closest readers: Peter Swanger, Susan Swanger, and
especially Caroline Higgins, for their valuable comments and encourage-
ment; to our great librarian Neal Baker; to Cheri Gaddis, for the constancy
of her help in all matters; and to Jeff Britt and JoAnn Martin, for unwav-
ering moral support. I dedicate this to all the Border Studies and PAGS
students whose questions over the past fi fteen years inspired this book.
v
P : 42 D B US
REFACE AYS EFORE THE
I   I
NVASION OF RAQ
Why did they veil G uernica ? 1 Why did they bother?
They bothered because they recognized they were free from the need
of the veil. And is it not lack of necessity that brings forth decency? Is that
not what the “middle class” has always been told, has said, has told itself?
Real wages have been declining in the United States since 1968. 2 That
is a fact. But it is a plunging fact, a fact that takes one nowhere but down
a rabbit hole. In an attempt to ground, it results in a fall. The fact that
is denied admission into the camera’s gaze is not a fact. You may “dig,”
doomed reporters, to bring facts to light, but once contaminated with the
twists of the underworld, the world that does not accord with “belief,” they
yield only dismissal—occasional laughter, the entertainment of derision,
perhaps at fi rst, but mostly boredom, cynicism: oh, “facts,” once again.
What else have you got? The plunging fact takes one down into despair, for
it is something a bout which nothing can be done . And every plunging fact is
a slippage, a loss of the tiny foothold in the climb that constitutes our story,
the story we seem so desperately to want to tell: “The American Dream.”
The driven fact is driven, as a nail is driven: it allows building, great fab-
rication. The driven fact is driven, as the iconic American obsession (the
car) is driven: it advances the narrative. It allows instant mobility, freedom,
and independence; it allows escape. The driven fact is not “factual,” but it
is always staged with factual precision. And fact is no remedy for it.
Colin Powell was about to engage in the staging of the “facts,” the
“intelligence.” But fi rst they bothered to veil G uernica. Guernica is a visual
depiction of Clausewitz’s characterization of war as the moment of the
suspension of ethics, but meanwhile, Clausewitz himself also insisted upon
vii
viii PREFACE: 42 DAYS BEFORE THE US INVASION OF IRAQ
the absolute necessity of the ethical moment before the war: war needed
to be justifi ed, and it could not, according to Clausewitz’s insistence, be
based upon a lie. 3 If the Clausewitzian formula still held, G uernica would
have to be veiled because this moment of staging and the war to come were
to turn Clausewitz on his head. While the pre-war moment was decidedly
unethical, the United States would cling to its claims that ethical con-
siderations were still in force in the waging of the war (see Abu Ghraib).
The Clausewitzian formula, however, no longer held. Veiling G uernica :
because they knew they didn’t have to. The staging of the driven facts: also
because they knew they didn’t have to.
In the end perhaps they veiled Guernica because there is no such thing
as a civilian anymore. G uernica is a commentary upon the horrors of war,
and so phallocentric has the West’s approach to war always been that we
seem to need to invoke the most civilian among the civilians—that is, chil-
dren, as a category and as living beings, and “women,” as a category—in
order to allow ourselves even a glimpse of appreciation of the depths of
its horrors. Thus, the greatest of the Western anti-war works of art—and
Picasso’s is no exception—invoke these most civilian.
There is no such thing as a civilian anymore. There are soldiers and ter-
rorists and “enemy combatants,” and then there are those who are none
of these, but there is no civilian: no one who is free of implication and no
one who may be offered protection.
David Foster Wallace lovingly describes the view of the aftermath of
the terrorist strikes on the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001
through the scene of folks gathered around the television set in the living
room of Mrs. Thompson’s house, in Bloomington, Illinois. They walked
back and forth between the kitchen and the living room. They sought
to comfort one another and struggled to make sense of it all. His affec-
tion for these kind Midwesterners is heartwarming, but his desire in “The
View from Mrs. Thompson’s” is to de-implicate “them” and to place
in its stead his own culpability for the version of America so hated by
those who carried out the attacks that day. These “truly decent, innocent
people” merely watching the scene unfold on the television from their
location in the heartland are decent, yes, but they are innocent, if at all,
by ignorance alone. 4 (No, not by ignorance alone, but by impotence also,
for the game has changed since 1974.) Nevertheless, knowing how things
are moving beyond the boundaries of the United States is absolutely criti-
cal, and the ignorance of insularity no longer guarantees innocence. More
importantly, however, one cannot implicate oneself in another’s stead.
PREFACE: 42 DAYS BEFORE THE US INVASION OF IRAQ ix
Equal i mplication does not allow substitution. There are no civilians.
(Thus, G uernica haunts, by its evocation of a seemingly distant moment.)
We are haunted by many such moments, moments we wish to keep alive
as part of the present but that also appear, undeniably, to be seemingly dis-
tant. The post-World War II prosperity that was seen in the United States
was lived out mostly by its white residents and mostly in suburban and
urban (rather than rural) settings. By the time people of color began to join
in these gains in large, visible numbers, the US economy was undergoing
massive transformation. 5 But by then, 1973–1974, the set piece of Suburbia
was fi xed in the national imaginary. This is where we would live, as we took
part in the American Dream. This is what we could count on: play by the
rules, work hard, and you will be rewarded, and no one will bother you.
You can have a new range, a new car, even a camper, even a waterbed, any
or even all of the best prizes during the heyday of “The Price Is Right.”
But the post-World War II prosperity enjoyed in particular by particular
segments of the US populace came at a cost paid by others: by segments of
the US population systematically excluded from access to these gains and by
residents of all the terrains on which the Cold War was staged in hot form
or even in cold form. With whom will you cast your alliance? With this one,
offering the splendor of consumer choice (always in a range of colors), the
chance to take a risk and perhaps strike it big, and the good life, as defi ned
by you (but usually looking eerily similar to the good life as defi ned by
most everyone around you)? Or with this one, promising that everyone—
everyone —gets at least this much and coming through on that promise (but
offering its own kinds of disillusionment)? O children of the millennium,
how could you not even know what the Cold War was? It gave us every-
thing we once had, and all you still might believe you still might have.
The middle class: it makes you yawn. You attempt to take a stance out-
side the middle class, but what else is there? And in your yawning you miss
all the drama. The middle class was i t . That’s what the Cold War was all
about. The hot form of the Cold War in Latin America was accompanied
by the Alliance for Progress, which took as its mission: Can a middle class
be created in this place, that one over there, fast enough to forestall social
revolution? It fi rst had to be made, as fact, not driven fact and certainly not
plunging fact, but undeniable fact, consensus-generating fact. “That, too,
could be me” fact. And the middle class was whom the Cold War was for,
the direct benefi ciary, (and) the audience.
The middle class is all that is said to remain in the United States, in
the early twenty-fi rst century. 6 At least, it is the only object of (indirect)
x PREFACE: 42 DAYS BEFORE THE US INVASION OF IRAQ
address (spoken about, never to). The “middle class,” intended audience.
Had they left the building? Were they bound and gagged in their seats,
watching, dutifully, but unable to applaud? Or had they been unable, this
time, to purchase admission? Why do politicians still keep speaking about
the middle class as if they are speaking t o the middle class? Is the middle
class the Echo of Narcissus? The middle class has gone missing.
The audience, too, is missing. And where is the camera? Multitudes of
screens have been purchased, from tiny to massive, and images are being
projected. But where is the camera? The audience has gone missing. (Or
has it?) Why bother to veil G uernica ? Who would know? Who would
recognize G uernica , there in the background, as Colin Powell dutifully
staged the facts that provided the rationale for the US. invasion of Iraq?
Had it been visible, who would have pointed out the irony? In what
venue? To whom would this illustration of irony have been addressed?
And to what effect?
But weren’t they vicious in silencing the truth-tellers? (See Valerie Plame
and Joe Wilson.) And doesn’t this mean there must still be a chance, still
a chance for an ethical hold, an ethical check, on the exercise of power?
Why should it mean that? In what possible world would that be true? This
is not the land of the “Arab Spring.” Why are you insistent on knowing
what it is that y ou , as an i ndividual , can do to right injustice? It is not an
accident that you ask that question. It is the weight of history. The year
1973 was a long time ago. No one will join you in the streets, not for very
long. The constant comment on the Arab Spring was: We never thought it
would happen t here ! The subtext: However amazing it is that it happened
there, we know that it will never happen h ere . Here is the place where
those things don’t happen.
We have the decency to veil Guernica . Because we know we don’t have to.
Richmond, IN, USA J oanna Swanger
NOTES
1. On 5 February 2003, US Secretary of State Powell made the case
before the United Nations to justify the US invasion of Iraq. Before
he spoke before the camera, a full-scale reproduction of Picasso’s
painting of G uernica, which hung just behind the podium, was cov-
ered with a blue curtain.
PREFACE: 42 DAYS BEFORE THE US INVASION OF IRAQ xi
2. This fact was generally not admissible into mainstream political dis-
course prior to the Occupy Wall Street movement.
3. Carl von Clausewitz, O n War (Michael Howard and Peter Paret,
eds. and transl.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976);
Idelber Avelar, T he Letter of Violence: Essays on Narrative, Ethics,
and Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 3–4.
4. David Foster Wallace, “The View from Mrs. Thompson’s,” C onsider
the Lobster and Other Essays (New York: Back Bay Books, Little,
Brown and Company, 2006), quote at 140.
5. David Harvey, T he Condition of Postmodernity (Cambridge and
Oxford: Blackwell, 1989); and George Lipsitz, T he Possessive
Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profi t from Identity
Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998).
6. This was the case prior to the Occupy Wall Street movement, in
which it began to be allowable to speak of the obscenely wealthy as
a class—“the one percent”—but it is still interesting to note that
“working class” is generally not allowable except as an indicator of a
stance in taste; it is not allowable in political discourse, and to the
extent that reference can be made without the immediate attempt at
dismissal via the charge of “class warfare,” the more powerful phrase
“working class” is generally substituted by “working poor.” The
“99 percent,” meanwhile, contains within it vast disparities in
wealth, income, economic security, and range of choice available.