flag day

Music: The Cure: Pornography My obsession with the surfaces of "pop" is admittedly a kind of avoidance behavior. Certainly there are a number of very real and disturbing cultural dynamics behind the Michael Jackson Fantasy Machine or the Runaway Bride's Bug-Eyed Psychosis Factory. Yet these dynamics are mundane, somehow easier to cope with. We should define mundane here not only in terms of bodies (how many are made miserable or dead), but also in terms of the degree of spectacle, or perhaps better, the "size of the stage."

Judith Butler's latest book Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence is a powerful call to conscience and a reminder of why I signed-on to be an academic in the first place. I have always been a fan of Butler, and found myself often defending her "jargon" while working as a grad student at the University of Minnesota. What I admire about Butler is also what I enjoy about Zizek: there is a willingness to "go there," directly, and confront the issues that need to be confronted on the bigger stage (not the biggest, though; that honor goes to Hardt and Negri, and I think their stage is so big that it evaporates into thin air at times). In this collection of essays Butler examines the way in which mourning is killed in the service of a vengeful state, with the events of September 11, 2001 at the center. Having immersed myself in the literature on mourning and trauma this past year, this book is timely (and could have saved me much time), and should be read instead of the well known Verso tracts by Baudrillard, Virilio, and Zizek. I'm slated to teach a course next year on "Rhetoric and Psychoanalysis," and I'll probably be assigning this text for a unit on "mourning."

What Butler is up to is also something I've been trying to think through for the past couple of years (principally for the new book project). I've been "thinking through" it because its, well, tough stuff to think about it, and minds much greater than mine have spent many more years getting to the place I'd like to be. Anyhoo, while for Butler the task is to mourn in a state open to the Other, to let the dead speak, I've been hung-up on the Derridian language of hospitality/hauntology (in which the task is not to mourn, but to dwell in a state of melancholia; it would seem Butler's mourning is Derrida's melancholia . . . same posture, different spin on concepts). In either case, the goal is an ethical posture of openness to the Other understood as simple (or radical, if you prefer) alterity (not the Lacanian Symbolic). In either case, the real pickle is judgment, a problem that I think rhetorical scholars are poised to work on quite fruitfully, if only the lot of them in older generations would stop resisting this pesky "post" label.

The ethical project of openness to alterity (a "negative theology of the subject," if you prefer) is one that Butler is helping to frame for our horrible "Darkside" Empire times (thanks for that George Lucas--it almost redeems your Jar-Jar racism). The work has to be done, not just on the page, but also in meat-space. . . (or in popular music which, I admit, I still hold out hope for . . . Matt Johnson's marvelous The The album, Mind Bomb, written around the time of the first "Gulf War," is a brilliant aesthetic intervention . . . "Armageddon Days are Here (Again)"-indeed!). And doing this work in real space-in my daily life and in how I interact with people is pretty tough. Hypocrisy is the greatest demon. But, if I'm going to start preaching hospitality in my work, I better work on being more hospitable when I'm driving on I-10, shouting obscenities at the evil alterities cutting me off.

Last night while at the lodge I was reminded of Butler's remark that the construction of a State of Vengeance could be seen plainly on the obituary page: an overly patriotic homage does less to honor the fallen soldier or deceased veteran than it does bolster the (imagined) phallic thrust of the Almighty Sovereign. During a ceremony in honor of Flag Day, a respected brother delivered a lovely history of heraldry in the formative years of the United States up until the statehood of Hawaii. It was a balanced and fair talk that seemed to acknowledge our past and present glory and sins. I "came up" in the Boy Scouts, and the talk about "Old Glory" was familiar faire. As a U.S. citizen, I am respectful of the flag-to the point of burning it, of course. I think the U.S. flag is mighty precisely because it can be burned; for this reason, when my goodly brother said the flag is only as powerful as we make it, I felt proud of the fraternity and the flag we pledge to every meeting.

But then, something weirder occurred (I'm not sure if this is "secret"-I doubt it): the brother asked the lights to be turned out. Another brother held the flag taught as a spotlight shined on it. Then, the brother delivering the speech turned his back on us and began speaking "as if" he were "Old Glory." He implored us to admire his folds (yes, he/it did), and then went into a sort of macho, seemingly signifyin' sort of self-aggrandizement. I remember the line "I am beautiful and arrogant." Our goodly flag went on to declare, in bravado starker than your most profane hip-hop gangster, how he boldly flew in foreign countries the U.S. helped to liberate. It ended with a claim to superiority and dominion over the earth because "Old Glory" flapped in the windless breezes of our moon.

I will never understand why patriotism is always yoked to arrogance and domination. Frankly, patriotism at the lodge last night started to sound like rape.

God bless Butler for helping to put a language to all of this. The older I get, the more I realize how deeply these pop culture perversities go.

But I couldn't bring myself to speak out at the lodge last night about the problems of this understanding of "our flag." I would be immediately misunderstood, labeled unpatriotic, and so on. God, us on the "Left" have a real challenge in "our times." At least we have each other, and that's enough to be grateful for, I guess. That's enough reason for teaching. That's enough reason to keep writing.