On the Possibility of Peace: A Defense of Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

As I woke up to a bevy of emails reporting that Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize, I was as surprised as anyone. (I'll explain my reasons in a moment). But what has surprised me more is the quickly-emerging discourse across the web that he doesn't deserve the award. And it was that discourse that I seek to address here.

I had not even considered him in connection with the peace prize before, most of my surprise was simply that sheer unexpectedness of it. And certainly there are reasonable questions about whether someone else is more deserving of it at the moment (I have not read yet of other candidates, but surely there are some worthy ones). But let's not make this about Obama's ego: He didn't ask for this. He didn't lobby for it. It was bestowed upon him. While it's certainly hopeful he will be more deserving of it in a few years time, I don't think we should conclude on that basis that he is not worthy now.

It is hard to deny that Obama has already (already? He has been in the world spotlight for at least a couple years now...) had a material impact on the world. But has he brought about peace? Of course not. It is certainly hard to reconcile the idea of the leader of a country currently occupying 2 other nations winning a prize in recognition of peace efforts. And of course there's the obvious retort that he didn't start those wars and was elected in part for his determination to end them responsibly (if not quickly).

But what Obama has done is to radically change the world's perception of the possibility of peace. After the last 8 years of Bush's perpetual War on Terror, Amercan's have been invested in the idea that their safety necessitated the continued conflict in the world. What is amazing is that Obama has already shifted the discourse of world events toward his own branded Hope. This is at once simple, eloquent, and profound. The material presence of conflict in the world is not something anyone could reasonable suggest will dissapear in the near future, but Obama has decidedly rejuvenate the idea that it could once again come about.

I fear that liberals are handing conservatives a rhetorical character attack against Obama by conceding he did not deserve this award. In my mind, he did. That doesn't make it any less surprising, but I think the possibility of peace is worth fighting for.

Obama has renewed this jaded liberal's hope for that day. Haven't you as well?

Public Wave (test post)

Frank Rich is White

I saw Frank Rich speak at the Guthrie tonight. He talked about the increasing spectacle of media and the merging of news and entertainment. As always he’s an insightful and eloquent speaker/writer. I was moved to ask a question in the Q&A at the end, however. He had concluded with a few ideas of the “what you can do” sort: Be more skeptical, and pay for good journalism. The second in particular hurt. It hurt bad. When even one of the most eloquent advocates against the ruins of capitalist political culture is left begging for money (he didn’t like my framing it that way, but that’s what it was"), we’re in trouble…

 

So I waited my turn at the microphone and said some approximation of:

“We as the public are facing a dilemma right now that you spoke of: Just as increasing access to the rudimentary information necessary for good journalism becomes readily available via the Internet, the news media have increased the barriers to distribution by cultivating the mediathon as you describe it. You gave two answers to that problem that I found unsatisfactory.

First you said we should follow the younger generations and become more skeptical of news stories. That’s all well and good but as anyone who teaches young college students today can tell you, such radical skepticism leads as often to apathy as any kind of political change.

And second, you basically pleaded for money. That is another problematic answer. We all paid $15-35 to even be able to see you speak. I was scanning the audience and I was only able to count 2 black people [afterward I saw a couple more, but that’s beside the point]. The barriers of money mean that not everyone is going to get a voice with that solution. Even in the Midwest this is hardly representative of the racial minorities in the population.

So what else can we do?

He got a little defensive about the idea that he was pleading for money and acknowledged that the newspaper business model might not last, but that a couple will probably survive, including the NYT. I would tend to agree with that assessment. And on the other solution he defended the idea of skepticism against apathy.

I didn’t really expect him to offer a revolutionary answer. I don’t think anyone yet has one. But I also think that these were important questions to bring up. I was satisfied simply making Frank Rich and a few hundred Minneapolis culturati feel uncomfortable about their whiteness and upper class status.

 

On my way back to my seat a women on the aisle said, “I liked your questions.” And on the way out after the lecture a couple of young black women smiled at me and said “hi” in way that I read as appreciation for what I had said.

And as I was getting on my bike leaving the Guthrie a couple of middle-aged white women walked passed (not noticing me) saying how much they “prefer [inaudible] because you don’t have audience members looking for their five minutes of fame.”

What ever happened to 15? I want my ten more minutes!

Foucault-Derrida on Madness

I have been thinking about the Foucault-Derrida debate on Madness and Reason for my presentation of it next Wednesday. Here is a small selection from my initial thoughts:

I would suggest that the question of madness which was the (fictional/pseudo) origin of the debate we have just entered has been displaced. In the process of a history of philosophy we cannot go back before the question of madness any more than Foucault could go back before a question of reason in Descartes. Reason, like modernity itself, has so multiplied that we seek in this debate some clarity that we can never revive. But it is the act of searching for it that sustains us as an academic enterprise. We are so invested in this debate (as a michrochosm of our lives) that we repeat it again in a new way. It is for this reason I think we must look especially beyond the purported object of debate (madness, reason), and pay special attention to the act of critique itself, for it is here that I feel the debate sustains itself in the history of the present, our present. I do not mean this in a purely methodological sense (what is at stake is not the value of archeology versus deconstruction, as if they were ever mutually exclusive). What is at stake, for us, for today, is the act of critique and the potential for critique to create

Pro-Choice Bowl-a-Thon

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