Something is wrong in America. Everyone can feel it. Everything seems shakier than it should be;
harder than it should be. We have lost something. We used to be the Land of the Free, the
“shining city upon a hill”, and “the Greatest Nation.” We were the superpower in the world. With God on our side, we defeated the Axis
powers in WWII by military strength and ingenuity and USSR in the Cold War
through the sheer power of our will and ideology. Now we seem to be apologizing for upsetting
puny nations of Godless camel riders.
Americans conquered the wild land and built this nation to unsurpassed
greatness in two short centuries. Now,
people with no regard for our laws, our language, or our values are pouring
across our borders, taking our jobs, and using our resources, and we are paying
them to do it. Something is wrong in
America, and it’s not us. It’s not hard
working, real Americans who built this country. It’s not our values, ideals, or
faith. Those principles were shared by
the Founding Fathers of this nation and used to craft the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution; documents second only to the Holy Bible as
the greatest writings of Man.
No, what’s wrong in America is not us, it must be someone
else: activist judges who have twisted
or ignored our founding documents for their own purposes; liberal politicians
who want to take the money we worked so hard for and give it to lazy people who
did nothing to earn it; politicians who strip away our rights so that we can
neither protest the injustice they impose nor defend ourselves from the
continued assault; government bureaucrats who value animals over humans and who
deny us access to the natural resources which God has provided for our benefit; unskilled, uneducated people whose first act
upon coming to our country was to break its laws by entering illegally. They
are what is wrong with America. They rob
us, imprison us, and enslave us. But, we
can resist. We know our enemy and we can
take back our country.
Often called “extremists”, “fascists,” “nuts,” or “fringe”
groups, the people who express hatred towards other groups are often shunned by
main-stream American culture. Though
subjects in these groups can feel separate or isolated from the larger society,
it is doubtful that they see themselves as very different from other members of
society. The movement of a subject from
feeling accepted and being accepting of others to a position of hate is not a
great leap. Rather it is just a few
small steps, not away from, but just tangent the mainstream. Nor does it require characteristics found only
in those who hate. All people possess
the capacity for hate and have likely felt hatred for another at some point in
our life. So why does hate and its
effects seem so natural to some and so irrational to others? It begins well before the object of hate is
ever encountered, before the threat is ever felt. It begins in the relationship between the
subject and what the subject loves. “The
‘doing’ of hate is not simply ‘done’ in the moment of its articulation. A chain of effects (which are at once
affects) are in circulation” (p. 57).
Before hate can be produced, there must first be love and a
fear of losing the object of one's affection.
The affect describe at the beginning of this narrative is neither
unreasonable nor uncommon. Many Americans, regardless of political ideology,
are frustrated by current economic conditions, the apparent gridlock in
Washington, and threats to personal and national security. Democrats and
Republicans, liberals and conservatives, recent immigrants and those who can
trace their families back to the founding of America, all express patriotism, a
belief in democratic principles, and the sanctity of individual rights and
liberty. It is not the love of America that sets the Tea Party apart from other
groups; it is the reaction to the fear of losing what is so precious that binds
Tea Party supporters. The Tea Party’s
response to the fear generated by current conditions is the objectification of
certain groups of people as embodiments of the threats they feel. As embodiments of these threats, these groups
have become objects of hate to many of those who identify themselves with the Tea
Party. As Ahmed (2004), “Such narratives
work by generating a subject that is endangered by imagined others whose
proximity threatens no only to take something away from the subject (jobs,
security, wealth), but to take the place of the subject” (p. 43).
Not quite a party.
So they are called the Tea Party, members of this movement
did not identify themselves as a party in the sense that Democrats are part of
the Democratic Party or Republicans part of the Republican Party. In fact,
frustration with current political parties is a common characteristic of Tea
Party members. Nor is this movement
organized as a typical political party. There is no central command or formal
party structure. A Google search of Tea Party produces multiple websites from
various groups all claiming affiliation with the Tea Party movement. The exact origin of the Tea Party is somewhat
unclear. Some site supporters of Congressman Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential
campaign as early founders of the movement.
New York Times journalist Kate Zernike reported that leaders within the Tea
Party credit Seattle blogger and conservative activist Keli Carender with
organizing the first Tea Party event in February of 2009 (Zernike,
2010). During the same month, CNBC Business News
editor Rick Santelli railed against a government plan to refinance mortgages in
response to the banking crisis. In his rant, Santelli suggested dumping the
derivatives in the Chicago River in a Tea Party style protest. Videos of the
speech quickly circulated across the Internet and spawned websites, blogs, and
other acts of support which adopted the Tea Party symbolism as a show of
solidarity (Last,2009). 
Early incarnations of the Tea Party primarily advocated for
reforms in US government fiscal policy which included reduced government
spending, reducing the national debt, and tax cut. However, from the beginning, the Tea Party
became a vehicle to express grievance about the government and society that
were not simply related to fiscal matters.
Opposition to financial sector bail out, economic stimulus efforts, and
the administration’s healthcare reform as wasteful government spending, opened
the door to criticisms of President Obama generally. Individuals and Groups with more extremists
views push forward to share the in the national attention being given to the Tea
Party. As more extreme voices received
attention, others were emboldened to express similar views. |
Screen capture from TeaPartyExpress.org. I can't understand why people think they might be racist. |
Like the Aryan nation in Ahmed’s article, members of the Tea
Party would not describe themselves as a hate group. Indeed, most often they
describe themselves as patriots and loyal Americans. Even the name of the Tea
Party originates with the iconic and patriotic act of protest against the King
of England. Tea Partiers consistently use narratives and rhetoric which is
filled of expressions of devotion to this country and elevated principles of
democracy. Most often the rhetoric is
about “restoring” America. Consider
Ahmed’s chapter on disgust. In the Tea
Party narrative, America is based on principles of individual freedoms and
individual responsibility. Communism,
socialism, welfare, and excessive taxation are concepts contrary to those
principles, so as Americans we reject them.
Yet in effect and affect, America has become tainted. People who do not share its founding
principles, like liberals and immigrants, have infected. Tea Partiers are disgusted because they are
affected by what they have rejected (p.86).
Discussion Questions:
If the motivations of the Tea Party are based in genuine
patriotism and a desire to improve the lives of Americans, why are some people (who
also genuinely hold similar feelings) so appalled by the Tea Party? In other words, what’s so disgusting about
the Tea Party?
Is there a difference between what the Tea Party is doing,
and viewing the Tea Party as a threat to our country, and working against them?
In what ways are the subjects who hate threatened or damaged
even as they seek to protect themselves?
References:
Ahmed, S. (2004) The Cultural
Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge.
Last, J. V. (2009). Opposition to the
foreclosure bailout rises. Weekly
Standard. March 4.
Zernike, K. (2010). Unlikely activist
who got to the Tea Party early. The New York Times. February 27.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteYes, while I do agree that for many “Americans” there is a widespread feeling of frustration with the political system in this country (its partisan bickering, its back-room deals, etc.) what I think is most interesting about this movement in particular is the way in which Tea Party Patriots have positioned themselves as the protectors and defenders of not only the American government but also the American way of life. The movement that was “taxed enough already” was ‘taxed’ in more ways than one – first, by the local, state and federal government (and this is the main concern of documents like The Tea Party Manifesto, which is why so many decry accusations of racism and hate), but also by perceived ‘un-American’ threats that have, and continue to, penetrate the American body. There are, therefore, at least two economies that are being taxed – a capitalist one and an affective one – and in response the Tea Party has adopted a two-fold economic policy.
ReplyDeleteThese “patriots” have circulated a narrative (one that is not necessarily new because it relies on past associations to stick), which shows the penetration of the American body by un-American interlopers is deep, effecting political leaders as well as citizens alike. Their narrative associates particular individuals with what might be called ‘disgusting,’ ‘un-American’ identities. These vile, anti-“U S” groups are groups like Socialists, Muslims, Homosexuals, and Blacks, which in themselves are not ‘disgusting’ (it saddens me that I even have to write that), but have become seen as such by some individuals through the affectivity of such terms. While these name-tags are being stuck to new individuals, they carry with them their historically circulated meaning and work to re-enforce perceived differences between “true” patriots and those who those who threaten them. Through the circulation of such narratives the Tea Party hopes to recoup losses in the affective economy, which will then in turn produce substantive changes in economic policies. To due this, to stick particular histories to new bodies, requires circulation and the greater the circulation the greater the returns. The Party’s success has in large part been due to its ability to circulate its message thanks to billionaires like David Koch and his brother Charles with their support of “grassroots” organizations like Americans for Prosperity [see the article link below for more].
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer
What is fascinating is the way in which particular bodies have come to embody so many various, often contradictory, “un-American” identities. In particular I am, of course, thinking of Barack Hussein Obama who is both a Communist and a Fascist, a Muslim and an Atheist. He’s a Homosexual. He’s a Terrorist. He’s anything that inspires fear, pulling “Americans” away from him and his policies towards true patriotism. Similar accusations were leveled against Occupiers. While the “truth” of these accusations is tenuous (at best), the effect they produce is undeniable. Whether the narrative has had the impact on us (and by us I mean those of us reading this blog) it intended or not, as people living in the good ol’ U. S. of A. (I hesitate to say Americans since I and many of us in the class probably do not fit the Tea Party definition of patriot) we have of course heard these stories (e.g. of Obama’s secret Muslim faith) and have both seen the effects of and been effected by them (I recall cringing in my car only a few weeks ago as I listened to conservative talk radio hosts file a report proving Obama’s Muslim faith). Once the Tea Party finally turns the affective capital their movement produced into a monetary value (which is what people like the Koch brothers hope will happen as the effects of this movement turn into policy) then the perhaps we can fix the economic problems facing this country…and that’s what this was really all about, right?
Sara Ahmed foregrounds her treatment of disgust by considering its etymological significance as that which is literally bad (dis) taste (gust). Various metaphors and discourses of disgust implicitly carry this gastrointestinal sense in which that which disgusts is violently abjected/vomited from the subject and becomes a border object which demarcates the surface of the subject-body apart from that which it cannot and must not assimilate/digest into itself. Yet the very possibility of disgust disturbs this projective act of othering. Disgust is created through proximity with the disgusting object, through its potential to be absorbed into the subject’s palette. When that which is to be digested threatens the dissolution of the digesting subject (poisoning the body, breaching the bounds of identity), a double turn occurs in which space is put between the self and the object. Having already proven that it can cross the boundaries of the subject, the object becomes the site where the battle against that which disgusts must take place and where the affect of disgust can adhere to other objects through contact. Like dirt and other possible conditions of disgust, disgust itself can stick to objects through mere association.
ReplyDeleteOne of the main elements of disgust which Ahmed describes is its performativity. The initial reaction to the disgusting object is one not yet of disgust but of surprise and anxiety. In refusing to accept the object, the subject must not only move away from the object but must efface the space of contact/internalizability which allowed the object proximity, retroactively reconstituting it through a performance of disgust. Speech acts perform this abjection and reify the object as the receptacle of disgust through the implicit consent of witnesses. We say “that is disgusting,” expecting those around us to agree. In this consensus, the trace of the object’s threat is occluded because the object is now poison and occupies a limits to what “we” can and cannot be. In this mutual setting of limits, a social identity emerges as those participating in the theatre of disgust adhere to each other in their mutual refusal of the object’s own “stickiness,” which adheres to other objects as mutually disgusting and which creates the possibility for future experiences of disgust-performance. Of course, the experienced object is never “digested,” being a condition, perhaps, of incoherence for the experiencing subject, and so its very stickiness “blocks” the ability to experience around it. The performance of disgust must be repeated and reaffirmed but is never completed since such completion would involve a coming to terms with the object which would unravel the very experience of disgust. Further, the performance of disgust never overdetermines the response of the witnesses, as Ahmed describes by noting how the dissent from the discourse of disgust of terrorism was a form of disgust with the discourse itself. In this sense, those who are disgusted with the Tea Party’s politics of disgust are engaged in a similar process of creating boundaries between themselves and an object which unsettles them. This is not to say that all performances of disgust are politically or ethically problematic: as noted earlier, disgust is important in identifying and avoiding that which is literally or figuratively poisonous to the body. It does, however, mean that a critique of any social movement, such as the Tea Party, is nigh impossible so long as we constitute ourselves over and against it; for critique, there must first be rumination and digestion.
History and Difference
ReplyDelete"Difference" is a ballyhooed term. Everyone wants to talk about difference because it seems the essential element in a splintered political landscape. Cathected to the term "democracy," "difference" seems to embody its paradox: we celebrate difference and must struggle with it; whether for better or for worse, difference intrudes and confronts any political thought we can manage to hold for even a few minutes.
Sara Ahmed raises the specter of "difference" as a horizontal phenomenon. Affects circulate as currency in an economy and the repetition and "stickiness" of affects cause them to accumulate value, engender meaning, form collectivities, bind others as others, and generally constitute a social polity.
Her normal concept of difference is revealed by her constant use of the passive voice, or the use of affect-nouns as mechanistically driving political constitution. E.g., fear "works to..." or disgust "operates" or "involves," etc. "It" does this or that to "bodies." To imply a "subject" or personality is "involved" in this operation is to make a gross error in theoretical judgement.
At one point in our readings, however, Ahmed invokes a quantitative difference rather than just a horizontal difference: "It is important not to neutralise [sic] the differences between objects and to recognise that some objects become stickier than others given past histories of contact" (92). In fact, I would argue Ahmed primarily ellides this kind of difference, and even her "histories of contact" remain indefinite, only implied. Of course, she is talking about histories of dominance, discrimination, power struggle, and colonization, topoi which distinguish histories of imperialism.
I think here she repeats a taboo on differential choice. Like many of the post-colonial readings we studied last week, Ahmed's is primarily a negative criticism. It must embody the pain of a non-normative "subject" caught or "stuck" within the terrain of normative discourse. I think she MUST "neutralise" the difference between object-other-bodies. She can then treat bodies as putatively equal, but I'm afraid it's only through having been equally negated by the heritage of European imperialism.
This may not be popular to acknowledge, but it does to me set a limit on the explanatory power of her criticism. The faded, belated European can only with difficulty, I think, join in unqualified endorsement. She or he, I wonder, must demur, whether in sadness or resentment, muttering, "yes, but ..."
She has given us a negative, but how are we to choose among negatives? And if you think choice is a mere fiction, what books are on your shelf?
The modern day Tea Party movement has been met with a high level resistance since its emergence in the early part of the 21st century. Yet, on a basic level (“on paper” if you will), the ideals of the movement seem to reflect those of many mainstream Americans--anti-government (read socialism), anti-spending (read increased military involvement), anti-immigration (read pro-American)—simply stated, take care of American citizens first, then consider helping people in other countries. As a capitalist country built on a foundation of individualism and competition, the Tea Party believes it falls in-line with the founding principles of the country, the very same principles that most citizens hold as their core political beliefs. To most Americans, the Constitution and other founding documents are what makes this country different from other countries and are also what makes this country great. However, there is a definitive disconnect between the Tea Party and the rest of America. This disconnect can only be explained by the relationship between the message and the subjects who perpetuate it. From an outsider perspective, there is no relationship between Tea Partiers and their political agenda. To us ‘common folk,’ elitists around the country are not affected by the objects they fear. National healthcare will not affect their insurance coverage. Foreign wars will not likely adversely affect their children’s futures. Illegal immigrants will not compete with them in the job market. Using Ahmed as a framework to understand this contradiction can help us to understand why a movement that seems to have so much in common with American voters can be viewed by so many as disgusting. The divide between subject and object is too far removed for non-Tea Partiers to accept. It is not that the Tea Party ideology is disgusting in itself. Rather, it is that MEMBERS of the Tea Party are seen as so. Ahmed explains that “offensiveness (and with it disgust) is not an inherent quality of an object, but is attributed to objects partly in affective response of ‘being disgusted’” (p. 85). How dare Tea Partiers speak on a topic that (in reality) has nothing to do with them? Once the anti-Tea Party movement began, these sentiments ‘stuck’ to Tea Partiers. They were labeled as the privileged upper class that was out-of-touch with the working class members of society. Because of the degree of separation, the views of Tea Partiers are viewed as farther from the mainstream than actually are (or may be). Once an object is viewed as marginal, it becomes an abjection worthy of disgust. “Disgust reads the objects that are felt to be disgusting: it is not just about bad objects that we` are afraid to incorporate, but the very designation of ‘badness’ as a quality we assume is inherent in those objects” (p. 82). Rich people are bad even if ‘poor people’ share their political ideologies.
ReplyDeleteAhmed begins this article with some brief discussion of her concept of affective economies—of the circulation of affect and the way it tends to produce more affect—the way it intensifies with the circulation of signs. I know I am still struggling to get a full, two handed grip on the way this concept works and am fairly sure I am not alone. I do, however, want to play a bit with what Ahmed seems to posit as one of the effects of this circulation of signs and affects attached to them within the context of the Tea Party and their messages as I have understood them.
ReplyDeleteIn almost everything we have read by Ahmed, this idea of mimetic slides in the process of affective circulation and attachment has been present, however, we have not seemed to dwell on it much in discussion. It is difficult, however, for me to get this two-fisted grip I seek without some significant attention to the “slides”—attention to where they happen and attention to where work seems to be done to avoid them happening. So, for instance, Ahmed notes that in the Aryan nation passage, through the work of the mimetic slide, “mixed race couplings and immigration become readable as (like) forms of rape or molestation; an invasion of the body of the nation, evoked here as the vulnerable and damaged bodies of the white woman and child” (44). She writes that the circulation of certain signs and the ways that they work in tandem with other signs that are in circulation produce the potential for the slip between immigrant and rapist (at leas of nation if not literal). I am very interested in exploring, in more detail, the mechanisms by which this occurs because what I find most fascinating in my current context is the uncanny ability to refuse to acknowledge where some of these slips are at play.
So as I have sat here reading, I have thought about how very similar the passage with which Kevin opened is to the passage with which Ahmed opened. Yes! They express the exact same sentiments and YES that's partially because those are sentiments that many Americans would embrace because of the loss they feel for a “good old days” or a “golden age”. However, when we (intentionally or unintentionally) ignore the mimetic slippages that are at work in the discourse of the Tea Party, we can fall into the trap of believing there is no racist agenda—that the Tea-Party ideologies are based mainly on socially acceptable concerns (financial, security, etc.) whereas the Aryan nation is based on racial hatred. I have not the time to pick apart the statement with which Kevin opened to illustrate where the slides are functioning so I'll just ask a few questions for reflection. To what bodies have the images they paint historically stuck? What bodies are left out of certain implications even though they could just as easily fit? Why are we—the civilized and educated—willing to discuss what we may see as disgusting views on immigration, but unwilling to discuss what occurs in discourses about immigration (and now national security and the economy too) that so closely mirrors other discourses and the motivations OR the outcomes of that mirroring? How those become conflated? How they inform one another and then get transformed into discourses that bear none of the weight of hate-ridden verbiage but maintain the venom enough to keep hate in circulation without disturbing the polite company of the elite enlightened? How skillful did we have to be at avoiding the mimetic slide for an entire conversation about the Tea Party to be almost completely free of discussion of the references in their literature that were clearly meant to include racial and religious differences as part of the separation between the “us” and the “them?”