I love politics. I love the sense of competition, of strategy, even of partisanship. When Schmitt says that the political is defined by the creation of the friend-enemy distinction, I think he does so knowing the nearly libidinal joy experienced by every devout follower of politics. As a progressive, I long to help out those often wayward Dems, to help think of ways to frame the debate, alter the language, and win the homefront's hearts and minds. I even think doing so is valuable - immensely valuable.
But I also think doing so is insufficient. At the end of the day, partisan politics and the jouissance upon which it is predicated remains a fundamentally problematic institution. Progressive change cannot obtain if it invests itself solely in the throes of politics. Thinking otherwise would be almost as wrong as thinking that investment in fighting the evils of capitalism is the end-all, be-all of the lefty fight. Laclau and Zizek, so often pitted against each other as opposite interpretations of the nature and favored means of political struggle, are nevertheless both very wrong in how much they let their thought be overdetermined by the political (Zizek being significantly more wrong, but whatever).
I suspect that ultimatelya more subtle type of progressive change is needed. For me, at least, it's hard to admit this just now. This administration has been so mind-numbingly horrible that it has transformed this Halloween into an almost pervasive state of existence. No haunted houses are needed for the invocation of fear, nor does any day need to be singled out as a day of the dead. With Iraqi dead clearing a hundred thousand (possibly six hundred thousand), American soldiers exhausted and dying, placed in escalating harms way by an insurgency we were assured was in its death throes, and with enemy combatants occupying some liminal space in which they are more or less purely biopolitical ghosts, and with Americana trucking along as if all is more or less well with the world, we are all already ghouls of a most heinous nature. I'm not talking Hamlet's father's type of ghoul. I'm talking vampiric undead, drinking blood for sport, without the good sense to notice the slightly floral scent of decay under their Hot Topix t-shirt. In a state like this, it's hard to see beyond ending this administration and its congressional enablers. So much work needs to be done to ensure a change in direction, and so much good will come from that change, that it seems foolhardy or indulgent to think a beyond the political for this particular political nightmare.
I want to acknowledge the importance of this sort of political change, and all the work that goes into it. But I also want to acknowledge the sort of limitations that are a part of its structure. Schmitt is right to define the political by means of its primary tendency - the friend-enemy distinction - but this tendency is not an absolute condition of the political (indeed, Schmitt's desire to elevate it to such is one of the things that makes his thought smack so sadly of fascism), and there is a way of thinking politics from a less calculative perspective.
From the engaged Buddhism of Thich Nhat Hanh to the reflective turn in Heidegger, the desire to think a different politics, one predicated less and less on calculation and partisanship, and more and more on mindfulness and openness.
What sort of thought, actions, or projects would be envisioned in such a rethinking/retreating of the political? As many a frustrated pragmatist will tell you, this is where those darned posties flounder. Heidegger never says what reflective thought would produce! This is for very obvious reasons, of course, but that doesn't mean we should just dismiss the frustration out of hand. After all, Heidegger might be on to something, but that doesn't mean everyone else is bandwagon hopping along with him. And for Buddhists, there's a long tradition of somewhat isolated reflection. This is changing, thank goodness, and so-called "engaged Buddhism" has gained significant purchase of late. Still, reading the recent writings on mindful politics still leaves one without much of an understanding of the stakes or the vision that a mindful politics might entail
So in brief, I want to make a more concrete set of proposals. I will begin with three.
First, the inclusion of meditation in the lives of politicians and political activists. If you are not someone who meditates on a regular or semi-regular basis, I'm sure this sounds a wee bit strange to you. I assure you it is far less strange than watching C-span's book TV or footage of congressional debate. Meditation is a chance to slow down and be at peace with all the tumult that is existence. It is a chance to, as Hanh puts it, be peace yourself. There you are, sitting in peace, breathing in and out, experiencing a letting-go and a nothingness that seems light years away from the backdoor dealing of political reality. Meditating won't fix anything by itself, but it will center you, challenge the coherence of the ego, and allow you to think questions of identity and enemy-creation anew. I'll be honest here. I don't understand why it works, but it does.
Second, a different relationship to mourning. This one I think is fundamental. Ours is a country with a rather twisted response to tragedy. From Oklahoma City to 9-11 to Katrina, this country suffers from efforts to transform crisis and tragedy into a simulacrum later deployed for rather lamentable ends. There is a real hesitancy to open ourselves up to the pain of these tragedies, to really let ourselves feel the wound, to get to know its texture, to see how that wound is everywhere, a shared vulnerability, a constitutive force. Instead, we turn to anger or forgetting or sublimation or repression. A politics of mourning - and there is no politics, as Derrida noted, that isn't already a topology of mourning - that embraces the existential reality of mourning and shared vulnerability, that stressed mindfulness in the wake of catastrophe, could have profound and transformative consequences.
Third, an end to hope. I enjoy the Shawshank Redemption as much as the next person, but Morgan Freeman is wrong: hope is not the greatest of things, it is the most dangerous of things. It is hope that has fueled most of the great genocides of the previous century. It is hope that supplies the nuts and berries that feed the sheepish hunter gatherers as they slumber through their cubicle work and take pride in their gas guzzling off-road vehicles. It is hope that writes the pages in George Bush's twisted future history textbooks, the one that takes all the suffering experienced in Iraq since 2003 and transmutes it into "only a comma." It is time, I think, that we give up on the poison pill oh hope and begin to recenter our thinking on how and why and what the present is, what it feels like, and what it calls for as a response. An end to hope means an end to the wistfulness of some future vision, and if we can pause in our flights of fancy - while also avoiding the dangers of a restorative nostalgia - some significant progress might be made regarding the world we actually live in, here and now.
Mindful politics. The Partisan in samadhi. The Buddha here now.
Just a thought.
Comments (1)
Ken, thought-provoking indeed. Let me respond in my blog as a way to connect your site, this proposal, and other pieces on mindful politics.
I'm almost there with you. I agree with much of what you have to say pre-proposal, but I'd offer some friendly amendments to the lines of argument about hope and meditation.
I'll try to post today. In general, I think a "center" or "think-tank", or perhaps some rather more creative and innovative entity around and about the issue of mindful politics is a good project. I think it would have to accomplish some dissociation from "Buddhism" (unless it is directly tapping and speaking to Buddhists), and for me it would be good if it accomplished the same dissociation from the "progressive faith" movement. Now, I'm using dissociation in Perelmanian terms. I don't mean to exclude from the get go. That seems contrary to a mindful politics; but it behooves such an effort to not be labeled nor caught in the orbit of those other designations -- it needs to be more than, and less than at the same time. More than the particular, more than scholarly, more than religious, more than partisan, and less than an answer to all, less than a naive nostalgia or look to the redemption of the future. I think that nexus, if fathomable, will be key, and in my mind very true to a Buddhist perspective.
I'll catch up with the rest at WoodMoor Village.
Thanks again Ken.
Nacho
Posted by Nathaniel I. Cordova | October 24, 2006 4:09 PM
Posted on October 24, 2006 16:09