Well, yes it was, of course. And it was an amazingly forthright, profound and poetic speech, the kind of speech you might have expected from, say, Toni Morrison, when she won her Nobel Prize. But plenty of other people around here will look at it from that angle.
I want to draw people's attention to some other themes that Obama introduced, that are likely to get less coverage: class, nation and covenant. What I think we are seeing here is the update of the "hope" speech we've all been hoping for and, if he survives this uproar, the outlines of his general election campaign.
In order to understand what Obama is doing in this speech, I would like to introduce the concept of "class-ification struggle." It was originally coined by the French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu. The point of departure, of course, is Marx's notion of classification struggle. In Marx's schema, classes are pre-political groups rooted in economic relations. That is, they emerge out of the struggle between the propertied and the property-less within the capitalist workplace. And from there, they enter into politics, which Marx understands as a kind of covert or veiled struggle between classes.
There are two fundamental problems with Marx's theory of class. The first is that economic inequality is not the only possible basis of group solidarity and political conflict. In the US, for example, race, ethnicity, and religion have often been generally been much more important. In truth, there have really only been a few moments in American history where class was the most important form of collective identity: the Great Depression and perhaps also the Jacksonian era.
The second problem with Marx's theory of class is that it pays no attention to the symbolic and ritual aspects of group formation. And these aspects are crucial. As most social scientists have come to realize, self-interest is almost never enough to generate group solidarity. Most individuals are better off defecting and free-riding. To understand why people join shoulders and make sacrifices, we need to look at things like the stories they tell about themselves, the rituals they engage in together and the experiences of self-transcendence that arise out of these stories and rituals.
Now, if we accept this conclusion, as I think we must, it means that there are always multiple and potentially competing sources of group solidarity in any society: race, gender, religion, class, nation, etc. And one of the things that political struggle is about, at the deepest level is determining which of these sources of solidarity will be the most important ones.
That is not to say that we can conjure any old group out of thin air. Obviously, people will be more likely, based on their life experiences and social positions, to accept some identities than others. A lower-class white person in the Jim Crow South was torn between identifying with black sharecroppers who were in the same economic position as him, and white property owners who were in the same racial category. I think we all know how that played out: race trumped class.
Which brings me back to Bourdieu and then to Obama. Bourdieu uses the term "class-ification struggle" to capture the dual and dynamic nature of political struggles over group solidarities. Such struggles are not just struggles between real and pre-existent groups; they are struggles about which groups will become real and how real they will be come. They are struggles about whether a class -- in the generic sense of the term -- will become a class at all.
Now, we all know that Nixon and Reagan busted apart the New Deal coalition. The way they did it was to build a coalition around race, nation and empire.
What Obama is trying to do is to bust apart the Reagan coalition and build a new one around class, nation and covenant. Let me explain. There was a John Edwards moment in Obama's speech -- actually, a couple of them -- where he talked of the need to transcend race and face the real source of our problems: corporate titans and Washington lobbyists. In other words, he injected class into the debate. He has done this before, now and again, but not, I think, to this degree.
The other thing that he did was to follow the lead of Lincoln and King by invoking a national covenant. Now, I use the term covenant in a various precise way that is not to be confused with, say, contract. The notion of covenant is, of course Biblical. God establishes a series of convenants with the Jewish people. The covenant is not between God and Moses, or between God and the Jews as individuals. Rather, it is between God and the Jewish people as a collectivity -- as a nation. If the people uphold God's commandments, he promises, then he will protect them.
Lincoln, King and also Kennedy all argued that the American constitution was a secular covenant of sorts, in which the American people agreed to uphold certain basic principles, which they broke at their peril. The notion that slavery was a violation of this covenant is an old one, and Obama invoked this argument again in his speech today.
Obama's talk about America as a nation is not new, of course. One of the things that moves so many of us so much when we listen to him, is that he tells us that we are part of America, and he tells a story about what America is and where it's going that we can wholeheartedly embrace. After watching the right-wing drape themselves in the flag with their blood-soaked hands, calling us un-American backstabbers, this is a cathartic moment.
So, we begin to get a taste of what the fall campaign against McCain might hold. McCain and his surrogates will continue to use race as a wedge, and they will embrace the kind of unfettered, imperialist nationalism that has become the shame and sorrow of this country.
The problem with right-wing nationalist imperialism is that it is nationalism without a covenant, without binding principles or guiding ideals that set limits to the blind pursuit of power, and without the kind of humility that issues in self-examination and -restraint. As the sociologist, Robert Bellah remarks in his book, The Broken Covenant, national choseness without a covenant is a signpost to hell.
And, so, we come to a fork in the road, with hope to the left, and hell to the right. The choice couldn't be starker.