a lecture from Zadie Smith...

...an amazing writer (also, a novelist)not much older than myself. before you read it, you are urged to read this not as a take on what our (us gringos)political future has in store. It is a wonderful addition to the ongoing culture wars as it affirms very cleverly and undogmatically the value of pluralism. Her essay happens to be about the current president of the USA, Barack Obama, but it is actually a very astute take on human identity and refreshing denouncement of the small mindedness of those whose expectations of others are always limited by the assumption that a human being is a fixed personality who can only speak with one voice. By voice, we are refering to tone, syntax and most importantly, sensebility.

After quoting ¨passages in his book, ¨Dreams of My Father¨, passages in which Obama quotes himself from youth sounding like a stereotypical American inner city black youth, Smith writes:

¨The tale he tells is all about addition. His is the story of a genuinely many-voiced man. If it has a moral it is that each man must be true to his selves, plural.¨

This is the, if not political genius, the personable genius of Obama who is able to address empathetically without being gushy the multiplicity in others and not simply the archetypal and for-all-too-long-pretended singularity of the multitude. She puts Obama in the company of Shakespeare and George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax the famous English statesman in the sense of their ability to function as ¨philosophical historians¨. She then turns to developing her theory of how this role comes into being:

¨The first stage in the evolution is contingent and cannot be contrived. In this first stage, the voice, by no fault of its own, finds itself trapped between two poles, two competing belief systems. And so this first stage necessitates the second: the voice learns to be flexible between these two fixed points, even to the point of equivocation. Then the third stage: this native flexibility leads to a sense of being able to "see a thing from both sides." And then the final stage, which I think of as the mark of a certain kind of genius: the voice relinquishes ownership of itself, develops a creative sense of disassociation in which the claims that are particular to it seem no stronger than anyone else's. There it is, my little theory—I'd rather call it a story. It is a story about a wonderful voice, occasionally used by citizens, rarely by men of power. Amidst the din of the 2008 culture wars it proved especially hard to hear.¨

Earlier on, Smith notes that the multivoiced quality that the ¨philosophical historian¨, a term coined by a historian of Halifax, defined for Smith´s article´s purpose as someone who ¨always saw passing events, not in the point of view in which they commonly appear to one who bears a part in them, but in the point of view in which, after the lapse of many years, they appear to the philosophic historian.¨This type of being requires is something that we generally dislike in politicians but love in our artists. She is hoping Obama embraces the artist in him--namely the poet. According to her, that will make him a better statesman to the world. Her point is well taken.

But the illusion of singularity which makes a shallow and conformist type of patriotism (you know the type) so popular can easily be reinforced when a president is trying to keep a majority together. A majority is kept together by staying on message and speaking with one voice. Of course this goes back to a point alluded to last month: that those at the grasroots, the PROGRESSIVE CONSTITUENCY in its perpetual state of becoming, will have to engage in their dialogue and provide a ramrod counter to those mediocore and ugly elements that keep us stupid (and certainly unhealthy). They also have Obama´s ear. Regarding the political future, the future of the world (with the US still at the driver´s seat) the devil is in the details.

But it´s nice that Smith uses the current President (obviously way more popular than any poet and all of art and Literature) as a springboard for discussing a point that is all too often lost in the midst of the majority of people cowardly trying to fit into extrinsic personality molds that are directly harmful to human instincts--and by extension, our world(s)