Ahmed and Obama

    In her article “Affective Economies” Sarah Ahmed argues that emotions have the effect of creating and maintaining boundaries between people and groups.  She gives the example of an exert that appeared on the Aryan Nation website.  In the exert, it is not hate for the non-white subject, but love for the white subject that binds them together and creates the boundary between them and “others.”  Ahmed also notes the inability of hate to be located in one object.  Instead, it circulates from object to object-- from the rapist to the interracial couple, to the illegal alien to the foreigner receiving aid.  I agree with her observation that this is not a fantastic phenomenon that only exists in extremist rhetoric, but something very commonplace.  

Another thing I found interesting was the attachment of certain signs to others or “sticky signs.”  The example she gives is “Islamic” getting attached to “terrorist,” so that when the audience thinks of a terrorist they also think of a Muslim.  I think something similar has happened with President Obama.  Take the birther business, for instance.  People became so skeptical of where Obama was born because he had not released his long-form birth certificate.  The primary theory was that he had been born in Kenya and was thus, not a natural born citizen and not qualified to be president.  He has a strange name.  He’s black.   His father was Kenyan.  He lived in Indonesia when he was a child. All of these factors caused the President to become thought of as a “foreigner.”  Thus, the birther issue became less about the law, and more about proving Obama’s “foreignness.”  It was matter of fear-- that a foreigner had invaded the office of the White House.  Because his father came from a Muslim background and his Indonesian stepfather was Muslim, many people questioned his Obama’s religion.  His thus became associated with Islam, despite his continuous contentions that he was Christian.  Blackness, muslimness, foreigness-- all of these signifiers became attached and contained within Obama’s body.   That’s why the birther issue gained so much traction; it had the element of fear on its side.