Features » February 9, 2007
Dreaming Up New Politics
Thinking different in an age of fantasy
By Stephen Duncombe
In the autumn of 2004, shortly before the U.S. presidential election and in the middle of a typically bloody month in Iraq, the New York Times Magazine ran a feature article on the casualty of truth in the Bush administration. In a soon-to-be-infamous passage, the writer, Ron Suskind, recounted a conversation between himself and an unnamed senior adviser to the president:
The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernable reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you are studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’
It was clear how the Times felt about this peek into the political mind of the presidency. The editors of the Gray Lady pulled out the passage and floated it over the article in oversized, multi-colored type. This was ideological gold: the Bush administration openly and arrogantly admitting that they didn’t care about reality. One could almost feel the palpable excitement generated among the Times liberal readership, an enthusiasm mirrored and amplified all down the left side of the political spectrum on computer listservs, call-in radio shows and print editorials over the next few weeks.
What worried me then, and still worries me today, is that my reaction was radically different. My politics have long been diametrically opposed to those of the Bush administration, and I’ve had a long career as a left-leaning academic and a progressive political activist. Yet I read the same words that generated so much animosity among liberals and the left and felt something else: excited, inspired … and jealous. Whereas the commonsense view held that Bush’s candid disregard for reality was evidence of the madness of his administration, I perceived it as a much more disturbing sign of its brilliance. I knew then that Bush, in spite of making a mess of nearly everything he had undertaken in his first presidential term, would be reelected.
How could my reaction be so different from that of so many of my colleagues and comrades? Maybe I was becoming a neocon, another addition to the long list of defectors whose progressive God had failed. Would I follow the path of Christopher Hitchens? A truly depressing thought. But what if, just maybe, the problem was not with me but with the main currents of progressive thinking in this country? More precisely, maybe there was something about progressive politics that had become increasingly problematic.
For years progressives have comforted themselves with age-old biblical adages that the “truth will out” or “the truth shall make you free.” We abide by an Enlightenment faith that somehow, if reasoning people have access to the Truth, the scales will fall from their eyes and they will see reality as it truly is and, of course, agree with us. But waiting around for the truth to set people free is lazy politics.
The truth does not reveal itself by virtue of being the truth: it must be told, and we need to learn how to tell the truth more effectively. It must have stories woven around it, works of art made about it; it must be communicated in new ways and marketed so that it sells. It must be embedded in an experience that connects with people’s dreams and desires, that resonates with the symbols and myths they find meaningful. We need a propaganda of the truth.
Progressives like to study and to know. We like to be right (and then complain that others are not). But being right is not enough—we need to win. And to win we need to act. I propose an alternative political aesthetic for progressives to consider, a theory of dreampolitik they might practice.
Go to Grand Theft Auto school
Progressives need to study dreams. Fortunately, we have a ready-made laboratory at our disposal. Unfortunately, it takes the form of something progressives traditionally disdain: commercial culture. Recognizing the importance of commercial fantasies does not necessitate some sort of pseudo-populist embrace of the entirety of popular culture. But it does mean that we need to recognize that in these expressions some popular will is being expressed. How that will is being manifested in popular culture may be something to condemn—or applaud—but the will itself has to be dealt with. Acknowledging the present passions of people is not the same thing as accepting things as they are. Instead, current desire is the fulcrum on which to leverage future change.
As unlikely as it seems, progressives can also learn a lot from a best selling shoot-‘em-up video game like Grand Theft Auto. Yes, all the hand-wringing, wet-blanket, moralistic critics of video games are right: Grand Theft Auto is apocalyptically violent. But there is something else about these games, especially morally suspect ones like Grand Theft Auto, that demands our attention. They are wildly popular. Why?
Video games like Grand Theft Auto may appeal to our worst libidinal instincts—a bit of eros and a whole lot of thanatos—but these games also demand the participation of the gamer; new worlds open up to the player as he or she develops new skills, and characters respond based upon the player’s past actions. In video games, unlike almost all other mass media, the spectator also becomes a producer.
This runs counter to much of how progressive politics is done these days. Consider the typical “mass” demonstration. We march. We chant. Speakers are paraded onto the dais to tell us (in screeching voices through bad sound systems) what we already know. Sometimes we sit down in a prescribed place and allow the police to arrest us. While these demonstrations are often held in the name of “people’s power,” they are profoundly disempowering. Structured with this model of protest is a philosophy of passive political spectatorship: they organize, we come; they talk, we listen. Progressives need to re-think our game. If people aren’t joining us maybe it’s because the game we’re playing just isn’t much fun to play.
With Reclaim the Streets (RTS) we tried playing by different rules. For five years I was an organizer with the New York City franchise of this international direct-action group. Beginning in London in the early ’90s as an unlikely alliance between environmentalists and ravers, Reclaim the Streets merged protests with parties, taking over streets and turning them into pulsing, dancing, temporary carnivals in their demand for public space.
The RTS protest model proved popular. From its relatively small first reclamation of Camden High Street in 1995, demonstrations grew steadily in size and scope; the model spread to cities across the United Kingdom and Europe, then Australia, Israel, South America, and the United States.
Acting autonomously, activists adapted the London model to local conditions. In New York, RTS protested everything from the privatization of public space to the World Trade Organization, throwing demonstrations to draw attention to the destruction of community gardens and highlight the exploitation of Mexican American greengrocery workers. Political targets shifted with location and over time, but the method of protest—and the philosophy behind the method—remained constant. RTS believes that political ends must be embodied in the means you use. Giving the idea of “demonstration” new meaning, protests should literally demonstrate the ideal that you want to actualize.
When RTS organized a protest what we were really organizing was a framework for activity. We would decide upon a place and time and put out a call. We printed up propaganda and press releases, trundled in a sound system, and set up legal teams to get people out of jail if they get arrested. But the actual shape the protest took on was determined by who showed up and what they did. We saw what we were doing as opening up a space: literally, in terms of reclaiming a street from auto traffic and specialized use, but also metaphorically by opening up a space for people to explore what political activism could mean for themselves. We turned spectators into producers.
Think different
Violent video games aren’t the only popular fantasies that progressives can learn from. As much as it might pain us to acknowledge, we can also learn a great deal from advertising. Progressives traditionally respond to the fantasies of Madison Avenue as reactionaries. We’re against it, and we want to oppose it with what we know: reason. But perhaps there are other ways for progressives to think about advertising. We need to burrow deep into it, drilling past the sizzle into the steak. There we’ll find its DNA, the code that guides its various permutations, no matter what product is being sold. From these building blocks I believe we can reassemble a model of communication and persuasion that is true to progressive ideals and effective in today’s world. In brief, we need to heed the call of Apple Computer’s grammatically challenged campaign and “think different” about advertising, and our politics.
All advertising is about transformation. The product advertised will transform you from what you are (incomplete, inadequate, and thoroughly normal) into what you would like to be (fulfilled, successful, and completely special). Transformation was once the property of progressives. What were democracy, socialism, anarchism, civil rights, and feminism if not dreams of a world transformed? Advertising is, in essence, a promise—often a false promise, sometimes ironic, but a promise nonetheless. Progressives need to work on our promises.
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Appeared in the February 2007 Issue
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