Radical Future Pasts: Untimely Political Theory

13. Holding Up Mirrors in (and to) Political Theory

375 13 Holding Up Mirrors in (and to) Political Theory Susan McWilliams And since you know you cannot see yourself So well as by reflection, I, your glass, Will modestly discover to yourself That of yourself which you yet know not of. —William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar In 1909, Mark Twain published a short story titled simply “A Fable.” In the story, an artist paints a beautiful picture. He then installs a mirror opposite the picture, finding the painting’s reflection more enchanting than the original. After the picture is so arranged, the artist’s cat goes into the woods to tell all the animals about the lovely image that can be seen in the mirror. The woodland animals are very excited to hear about the picture, both because it is new and because they admire the cat, a “learned” creature who “could tell them so much which they didn’t know before, and were not certain about afterward”: They asked what a picture was, and the cat explained. “It is a flat thing,” he said; “wonderfully flat, marvelously flat, enchantingly flat and elegant. And, oh, so beautiful!” That excited them almost to a frenzy, and they said they would give the world to see it. Then the bear asked: 376 Susan McWilliams “What is it that makes it so beautiful?” “It is the looks of it,” said the cat. This filled them with admiration and uncertainty, and they were more excited than ever. Then the cow asked: “What is a mirror?” “It is a hole in the wall,” said the cat. “You look in it, and there you see the picture, and it is so dainty and charming and ethereal and inspiring in its unimaginable beauty that your head turns round and round, and you almost swoon with ecstasy.” The ass had not said anything as yet; he now began to throw doubts. He said there had never been anything as beautiful as this before, and probably wasn’t now. He said that when it took a whole basketful of sesquipedalian adjectives to whoop up a thing of beauty, it was time for suspicion.1 The ass then volunteers to see the picture himself, to test his own impressions against the cat’s story, and to report back. But when he gets to the artist’s house, he stands between the picture and the mirror. On his return, he tells the other animals that the only thing to be seen in the mirror is an ass—“a handsome ass, and friendly, but just an ass, and nothing more.” Confused by these differing accounts, the other animals make their own trips to look into the mirror. Each of them sees in it his own kind: the cow sees a cow, the tiger sees a tiger, the lion sees a lion, and so on. Finally, the elephant—the “King of Beasts”—takes his turn and returns to the woods in a fury. Anyone can see, he tells his subjects, that there is nothing to be seen but an elephant. At this, Twain ends the story with a “Moral, By the Cat”: “You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you stand between it and the mirror of your imagination. You may not see your ears, but they will be there.”2 Mirroring Theory, Theorizing Mirrors Political theorizing, Peter Euben has told us, involves holding up “distant mirrors” to contemporary life, mirrors that help us reflect upon our own political and cultural situation in ways that mitigate—even if they do not avoid entirely—the myopia of presentism. Those mirrors might take the form of “premodern texts, unpopular theories, peculiar locutions, and political or cultural nonsequiturs.”3 We may also find such mirrors—as his Holding Up Mirrors in (and to) Political Theory 377 daughter, Roxanne Euben, has demonstrated—in alternative or foreign theoretical traditions.4 In this way, the work of the theorist tracks the work of the ancient Athenian comedians and tragedians, who tried to engage their audience’s capacity for deliberative and self-critical reflection by exposing them to mimetic worlds.5 It also tracks the work of the ancient theôroi, the official ambassadors who traveled to foreign city-states or the oracle at Delphi , then returned to their city-states with stories of unfamiliar traditions and customs, using them to reflect upon traditions and customs at home.6 Yet to talk about theorizing as...