Bodies In Motion: Part II

Bodies in Motion: Part II (See Part I)
We are constantly told by the right-wing ownership class that we should embrace economic contingency, freely flow to new jobs, to be ready instantly retrain ourselves in some new esoteric specialization in order to better serve the latest economic and technological exigency.

At the same time, we are under the strict orders of the Right that we must have traditional, intergenerational families with traditional values, including strong, long-standing religious and community ties. (Sennett, in FLESH AND STONE, has a marvelous chapter where he discusses the strains and dislocations caused by beginning of capitalism in Paris in the Middle Ages, occurring as it did about the same time as the religious revival movement known to as the Imitation of Christ. The first portended the rise of homo economicus, that profit-seeking individualistic actor who eventually overruns the world, and the second, a blossoming forth of human sympathy for one's fellow beings under the image of Christ's suffering. Kinda incompatible, no?)

Liberals are accused by right-wing propagandists of attempting to limit the free flow of goods, calling any socially responsible redistributive programs socialism or communism. They accuse liberals of screwing up the proper free ciculation of goods with their "bleeding heart" policies that prevent the full and complete appearance of Smith's miraculous Indivisible Hand, the ne plus ultra of circulation.

Speaking of hands, on the other hand, there is the conservative's Visible Hand of Discipline. Conservatives claim liberals promote the free circulation of bodies under unclean social circumstances, e.g., the endorsement of homosexual relationships, the mixing of the races. The right-wing also frequently resurrects a self-serving shorthand of the 60s during which they claim a tidal wave of orgiastic behavior, fueled by drugs and radical left politics, nearly poisoned the American body politic. Moral police, they only trust the circulation of people under the goad of economic circustances. Under other circumstances, like the free association of one body with another, the free sociality of desire, the heavy-handed scold appears and slap the bodies back into line.

The rightist economic fantasy, that we as a nation practice the free-market values we espouse, that we promote the free circulation of goods, is pure nonsense, of course. What we actually have socialism for the wealthy, or, crony capitalism. Through our post WWII grasp on the short hairs of the world economy, the U.S. government tampers with the free flow of goods and labor all the time according to the needs of US business (which are now closer to identical than any time since era of the Robber Barons).

Anyone even marginally acquainted with the doings of business knows that as much as possible companies try to find ways to create monopoly positions in their markets. Or, to continue using the analogy to circulation, to staunch the flow of life-giving money to its competitors. Either that or they engage in a form of tacit price-fixing with the competition to insure profits. Or coerce the government to grant them some favorable circumstance under which to conduct their business to the detriment of their competitors. Or all three at once. In any case, these strategies attempt to freeze circumstances advantageous to them, to close off competition, interrupt the free circulation of goods and ideas, or to stimulate the growth of government hand-outs so they may suckle at the government teat.

Poor people are a good example of market flows which do not promote economic health. Marooned in urban environments where healthy foods are either not readily available or too expensive, poor people purchase and prepare foods which inexpensively short-circuit hunger and which incidentally promote conditions like diabetes: starchy, sugary, super-processed snacks and meals. (Incidentally, if you haven't read the recent NY Times series on diabetes, you really should; it's a chilling indictment of the price we as a society pay in medical and social costs for the free circulation of diabetes-inducing foods. Poor New Yorkers are twice as likely as middle class New Yorkers to have diabetes).

But instead of facing the disastrous effects of its anti-poor, anti-middle class policies on actual bodies, this administration instead points to terrorists, homosexuals and liberals as those who would put American's bodies in jeopardy. It promises to defend the bodies of true believers, and in the ultimate revenge fantasy of the fundamentalists – the "Left Behind" series – they get the pleasure of watching unbelievers get slaughtered by Jesus. This gang stimulates hatred of the Other, of the dissenter, as a means to keep the resentment of its shock troops stoked and ready for action.

So how can the Left get out from under this mythological version of how the U.S. economy works? How can it stop being cast as a promoter of the circulation of dangerous, debased and defiled bodies? And how can it defend itself from Jesus' terrible swift sword, which, according to the fundamentalist right, will soon spill the blood of the infidels all over the Promised Land?

I'll get back to you on that.