As the media frames it, the Occupy movement suffers from a lack of rhetorical definitiveness. The talking heads continue to call for a platform, an agenda, an exigence. But the movement denies any one exigence more specific than systemic ineptitude, in that the more specific the exigence, the more limiting the constraints on whom and what and how the movement represents. This nebulous identity affords Occupy a capaciousness and alacrity that a more rigid ideological stance might preclude. But the movement’s strength is its weakness, and the powers that be are testing the cohesiveness of a movement that depends upon the occupation of physical space as its sole symbol of solidarity by removing from it this one rhetorical possibility that the movement’s constraints have heretofore embraced, as we saw earlier this week at Albuquerque’s Yale Park.
So the question becomes, can a rhetorical act lacking a well-defined exigence still possess rhetorical impact?
There have been attempts to define that exigence from within the movement, as I saw on Friday, October 21, during the (un)Occupy Albuquerque teach-in in the UNM Student Union atrium. I had been asked to emcee that Friday afternoon, but when I arrived another volunteer appeared to have the duty locked down, and I was more than happy to relinquish my one responsibility to her (which now means I now have to find some other way to do my part). The final speaker that afternoon was a young political science major attending to electoral reform through the abolition of the single-member plurality district system—not as sexy as corporate greed, but probably a more pragmatic exigence.
What’s interesting about the Occupy movement is it claims as its ambiguous exigence the same indignation that the Tea Party claimed in the beginning, but whereas the Tea Party determined that the fault lies with big government, the Occupy movement appears to demand corporate accountability, which requires greater government accountability to voters. I have a number of rather libertarian friends whom I tend to butt heads with over exactly why Obama has disappointed us, but after hours of agonistic debate we are always able to rally around an exigence that government is not accountable to the people, that our electoral system has been corrupted by unfair campaign finance legislation, and that before we can address any other issue, we need to address electoral reform.
It might follow, then, for the Occupy movement that they might identify such a specific exigence as their rallying point that even the Tea Party won’t be able to argue with. And as much as I and my libertarian friends would be happy to carry that flag, something tells me that looking for a foundational issue isn’t the way this movement works.
There’s something very sophistic about the Occupy movement that I’d like to see sustained. No leaders. No manifestoes. No specific exigences. Occupy is an ecotone: a conflagration of ideo-diversity. Humanity is mutating into a social animal that values deliberation, and when generative deliberation is restrained in one area, it sprouts up elsewhere. If it can’t happen in Congress, it’ll press up through the concrete of Manhattan.
I appreciate the sentiment behind the political science student’s search for a common, foundational exigence, but the problem is chicken-egg, and the solution must be grassroots. Particular exigences with their own submovements will sprout from Occupy to confront these various issues, or submovements that already exist will graft onto the larger trunk. But for now Occupy is just a seedling. We need to be careful not to strap ideological stints to the tiny sprout, or we risk stunting its growth. At the same time, in such a hostile environment, we need to be careful how we nurture that growth. Certainly electoral reform is one component of that fertilizer.
But when it comes down to it, this movement is all about bodies on the ground. The tables are turning. The signifier is producing the signified. The act of solidarity through the physical occupation of a public space is producing the exigences that compel it. At events like the teach-in, we are creating a reality, albeit over the hum of vacuum cleaners and the passing conversations of a less than engaged student body.
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