“Don’t let it bring you down
It’s only castles burning,
Find someone who’s turning
And you will come around.”

-Neil Young

Jeffrey, don’t let it bring you down. I agree with you but I think that its not all as bleak as it seems. As you said OWS managed to invigorate May day in the U.S. And I do not think we should be surprised that this received so little coverage. Once you set aside a day of the year to designate something special you are in a sense incorporating it into the status quo. As I have mentioned before I think that one of OWS’s strong points is it’s ambiguity, discontinuity, irregularity, unpredictability, and transgressive nature. OWS, relies more on tactics, not strategies. When I speak of tactics and strategies, I mean here something resembling the theoretical conception of tactics and strategies outlined by Michel de Certeau. I think for the progressive activist everyday should in a sense be May day.

We know that an official annual day, or holiday, can, despite good intentions, end up aestheticizing a political problem. Such special days can act as temporal entities that comfortable routinize which give participants the sense that for one day a particular problem is being addressed or reflected upon critically. In this way such special days, can actually instead end up papering over the political problem they were meant to address. One danger to the progressive critique of a normative system that I think a ‘holiday’ can pose is that that day can wind up containing transgression safely within its borders. In thus doing, it can shape the transgressive act, in ways that are not always desirable from the standpoint of the progressive activist. Any transgression, which normally adds power to the activist’s, can lose its power because the transgressive act is being performed on a special day set aside for such actions. Its like halloween. On that day there is nothing transgressive about transforming into a fantasy character of your choosing. A character which on any other day of the year would of course be taboo. Whereas OWS managed to really succeed in adding much needed substance to May day, your troubled feelings point to the great strength of OWS. This strength is its’ transgressive aspect. Its just harder to be transgressive on a day set aside for, well, transgressing. And what could be more taboo than demanding rights for workers in a society that so uncritically, lives and idealizes capitalism.

I also think that my reading as well as yours, of the Schultz/Hannity debate was rather pessimistic, if not cynical. Though, I think emphasizing the dreary nature of the structural problem is a valid dimension that we cannot ignore I think that there is always room for movement and resistance in these ‘structures’. For example if the stage was already set, which it was, when Schultz walked into that interview, there really was no need to take Hannity or that setting seriously. There really was no need to even try. Schultz’s pro-active strike, which you pointed out, was arguably right on target. That opening statement tells the audience that he knows from the onset that he’s in an absurd casino where all the decks are stacked against him . It tells the audience that he is aware that his ‘character’ and OWS has already been scripted and defined. It tells the audience that he is aware of the fact that he has been cast to play the role of a defendant in a Kafkaesque courtroom. It tells the audience that he is aware that any rational ad-libbing done on his part in this play will be perceived of by the audience as to be irrational. For example, how can you respond intelligently to someone who is trying to draw preposterous connections between OWS and the sanctioning of rape? Hannity would have brought that up regardless of Schultz’s attitude. Think about Alice’s vein attempts to use rationality in wonderland.

Given this, I think that Schultz’s approach was the right one. If you know very well that you are walking into a charade, a scripted play, a circus, which purports to be something else, then perhaps the best thing to do is tell that entity just that. Apart from walking off the set one knows that in such a setting one cannot refuse to play the role assigned to him. However, one effective form of refusal in such a situation, might be to tell Hannity this truth directly-more importantly the audience. In its most direct form this tactic would consist of saying two things to Hannity’s face; 1) I know and you know that we are both now in an absolutely farcical wonderland.2) I know and you know that in this farcical wonderland, we can be no more than farcical characters.

Best,

David