Dream DDream_Layout_09-11-06.inddream_Layout_09-11-06.indd i 99/11/2006/11/2006 11:47:45:47:45 PPMM Also by Stephen Duncombe The Bobbed Haired Bandit: A True Story of Crime and Celebrity in 1920s New York (co-authored with Andrew Mattson) The Cultural Resistance Reader (editor) Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture DDream_Layout_09-11-06.inddream_Layout_09-11-06.indd iiii 99/11/2006/11/2006 11:48:15:48:15 PPMM Dream Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy Stephen Duncombe DDream_Layout_09-11-06.inddream_Layout_09-11-06.indd iiiiii 99/11/2006/11/2006 11:48:16:48:16 PPMM © 2007 by Stephen Duncombe All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without written permis- sion from the publisher. Requests for permission to reproduce selections from this book should be mailed to: Permissions Department, The New Press, 38 Greene Street, New York, NY 10013. Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2007 Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Duncombe, Stephen. Dream: re-imagining progressive politics in an age of fantasy / Stephen Duncombe. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-59558-049-8 (hc.) ISBN-10: 1-59558-049-2 (hc.) 1. Political participation—United States. 2. Progressivism (United States politics) 3. United States—Politics and government—2001– I. Title. JK1764.D863 2007 320.51’30973—dc22 2006012056 The New Press was established in 1990 as a not-for-profi t alternative to the large, commercial publishing houses currently dominating the book publishing industry. The New Press operates in the public interest rather than for private gain, and is committed to publishing, in innovative ways, works of educational, cultural, and community value that are often deemed insuffi ciently profi table. www.thenewpress.com Book design by Rob Carmichael, SEEN This book was set in Caecilia and Goudy Sans Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 DDream_Layout_09-11-06.inddream_Layout_09-11-06.indd iviv 99/11/2006/11/2006 11:48:19:48:19 PPMM For it must be noted that men must either be caressed or else annihilated. —Niccolò Machiavelli, 1532 So long as you rely on the effi cacy of “scientifi c” demonstrations and logical proof you can hold your [political] convention in anybody’s back parlor and have room to spare. —Walter Lippmann, 1913 All power to the imagination! —Graffi ti in Paris, May 1968 In our dreams we have seen another world. And this new, true world was not a dream from the past; it was not something that came from our ancestors. It came to us from the future; it was the next step that we had to take. —Subcomandante Marcos, 1994 DDream_Layout_09-11-06.inddream_Layout_09-11-06.indd v 99/11/2006/11/2006 11:48:20:48:20 PPMM DDream_Layout_09-11-06.inddream_Layout_09-11-06.indd vivi 99/11/2006/11/2006 11:48:20:48:20 PPMM Contents Acknowledgments viii Chapter 1. Politics in an Age of Fantasy 1 Chapter 2. Learn from Las Vegas: Spectacular Vernacular 28 Chapter 3. Play the Game: Grand Theft Desire 51 Chapter 4. Think Different: Advertising Utopia 78 Chapter 5. Recognize Everyone: The Allure of Celebrity 101 Chapter 6. Imagine an Ethical Spectacle 124 Chapter 7. Dreampolitik 176 Notes 184 Index 219 DDream_Layout_09-11-06.inddream_Layout_09-11-06.indd viivii 99/11/2006/11/2006 11:48:20:48:20 PPMM Acknowledgments This book arose out of many discussions and demonstrations. To begin, I’d like to thank everyone in the Fantasy Reäl cabal for their wisdom, criticism, and good company, and to single out two mem- bers in particular: Jeremy Varon, for his insightful and encour- aging correspondence over the course of this book, and Andrew Boyd, for the brainstorming sessions that got it going in the fi rst place. In addition, Andrew generously allowed me to cannibalize and reprint fragments of an earlier essay we co-wrote. I want to thank my political comrades in the Lower East Side Collective, Reclaim the Streets, Absurd Response, the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, and so many other groups, who have taught me so much over the years. In addition, Larry Bogad, Jane Duncombe, Jason Grote, Ron Hayduk, Leslie Kauffman, Andrew Mattson, Kelley Moore, Mark Read, Chuck “Yeo” Reinhardt, Ben Shepard, Astra Taylor, and Alice Meaker Varon have infl uenced my thinking on this project. I’d like to thank all my colleagues at the Gallatin School of New York University, particularly Ali Mirsepassi DDream_Layout_09-11-06.inddream_Layout_09-11-06.indd viiiviii 99/11/2006/11/2006 11:48:21:48:21 PPMM Acknowledgments ix for his support, Mary Witty for making the chair’s work manage- able, Nina Cornyetz for her knowledge of all things Fascist, George Shulman for sharpening my thinking about dreaming, Lisa Goldfarb for raising the politics of poetry, and Michael Dinwiddie for keeping me sane on Saturday mornings. I want to thank my students, specifi cally Stacy Han, Kavita Kulkarni, Kavita Rajanna, and Geoffrey Winder for keeping my thinking fresh; my “game boys” Robert Jones, Oren Ross, and especially Haim Schoppik and Ivan Askwith for their help in understanding—and playing—Grand Theft Auto; Maryellen Strautmanis and Sofi a Contreras for taking such good care of my own boys; Eyal Rozmarin for sharing his passion for theory and his understanding of the intersection of politics and psychology (including mine); and the staff of Café Esperanto on MacDougal Street, my offi ce away from my offi ce, for putting up with my long lingerings over a single cup of coffee. I will always be indebted to my mentor Stuart Ewen for intro- ducing me to the works of Walter Lippmann and teaching me about the importance of spectacle—though I’m not quite certain I learned the lessons he intended. I am also much obliged to The Baffl er, the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, the Brooklyn Rail, and Radical Society for letting me try out some of these ideas in print and then allowing me to borrow them back. Thanks go to Colin Robinson for his instinct for the audacious and for his generous embrace of my ideas, fi rst at Verso and then at The New Press; Andy Hsiao for his encouragement; Stewart Cauley for his graphic sense; Maury Botton for putting this all together; Ina Howard for spreading the word; and my editor, Sarah Fan, who got this book from the beginning and then worked hard to get it where it needed to go. Also, a very special thanks go out to my father, the Reverend David C. Duncombe, who has shown me throughout his life that politics must speak to more than just the mind. And fi nally, none DDream_Layout_09-11-06.inddream_Layout_09-11-06.indd ixix 99/11/2006/11/2006 11:48:21:48:21 PPMM x Acknowledgments of this would have been possible without the love and advice of my wife and unoffi cial editor, Jean Railla. This book is dedicated to our two sons, Sydney and Sebastien, who, more than anyone else, have taught me the power of imagination. DDream_Layout_09-11-06.inddream_Layout_09-11-06.indd x 99/11/2006/11/2006 11:48:23:48:23 PPMM 1. Politics in an Age of Fantasy In the autumn of 2004, shortly before the U.S. presidential election and in the middle of a typically bloody month in Iraq, the New York Times Magazine ran a feature article on the casualty of truth in the Bush administration. Like most Times articles, it was well writ- ten, well researched, and thoroughly predictable. That George W. Bush is ill informed, doesn’t listen to dissenting opinion, and acts upon whatever nonsense he happens to believe is hardly news. (Even the fact that he once insisted that Sweden did not have an army and none of his cabinet dared contradict him was not all that surprising.) There was, however, one valuable insight. In a soon-to-be-infamous passage, the writer, Ron Suskind, recounted a conversation between himself and an unnamed senior adviser to the president: The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality- based community,” which he defi ned as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernable reality.” I nodded and murmured something about Enlightenment principles DDream_Layout_09-11-06.inddream_Layout_09-11-06.indd Sec1:1Sec1:1 99/11/2006/11/2006 11:48:23:48:23 PPMM 2 Dream and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create reality. And while you are studying that reality— judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.1 It was clear how the Times felt about this peek into the po- litical mind of the presidency. The editors of the Gray Lady pulled out the passage and fl oated it over the article in oversized, multi- colored type. This was ideological gold: the Bush administration openly and arrogantly admitting that they didn’t care about reality. One could almost feel the palpable excitement gener- ated among the Times liberal readership, an enthusiasm mirrored and amplifi ed all down the left side of the political spectrum on computer listservs, call-in radio shows, and print editorials over the next few weeks.2 This proud assertion of naked disregard for reality and unbounded faith in fantasy was the most damning evidence of Bush insanity yet.