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8 The Return of the Oppressed Frederick C. Moten with B Jenkins My mom, B Jenkins, and I have spent the last couple of years talking, laughing, singing, and arguing by phone and letter about Bill Clinton. I’d like to submit to you a portion of our exchange, the collective authorship of an old ensemble, the ensemble of the recliner, in honor of Ma’s blue La-Z-Boy planted right in front of the television in the den where she watches C-SPAN. There’s reference here to a mode of conversation, a way of writing that cuts and augments academic conventions and the increasingly delusional style of what passes here for a public sphere. Ma’s talk moves especially to break a speedup that manifests itself in products without voice/sound/tone, without phonic substance and the difference in accent that substance always carries. She makes me sound—which is to say sound different—and that sound irrupts into an automation that is, itself, reflected in complex ways in the very fact of Clinton, even though he can play off a little cry in his voice. The content of her sound also moves to critique (and critique the media critique of) the automated everyday wisdom in nonacademic discourse: in this case, the black support for Clinton which strikes us as both rational and oppressively rationalized, a discursive analog to the dangerous labor black workers performed on/as the assembly lines in Detroit in the 1960s, a regime they dubbed “niggermation.” She shows the rational rigor (in spite of its denigration in the 137 press as some intuitive and unfathomable identification) and the rationalized failure of this wisdom while noticing the links between two powerful forms of “left” social critique that find themselves in the position of supporting a war criminal responsible for a vicious attack on what was left of an always already underdeveloped welfare state. Part I/B’s notes Spring 1996 That Bush set.1 All I said over there was that I got pretty tired of not having a real choice when I got to vote, that I want to vote for candidates who aren’t the lesser of evils in presidential, senatorial, gubernatorial, and mayoral elections, when dingy Elo asked what did I mean? Then she wanted to know what the hell did I want—we have Bill Clinton. The dictator, Q.B., took over and began to lecture me on why we need not worry, because we have it better than ever before. He alleged that I was no better than the rest of the greedy black middle class that never gets enough. He alleged that I made a drastic change when I went to Carson City to work for Dick Bryan2 and I’ve been crazy as hell ever since. I asked if it ever occurred to him that maybe I learned something, particularly that the world of politics is a bundle of false impressions? Of course, he knows that, and that is why he feels so secure with Bill. During the course of that argument his brother James called from New York, and when Qube informed him that I had gone overboard, I had to stand a questioning by him. Normally, I have always been able to inform and influence that household on matters political, but not today. They believe he will take care of us better than anyone else. Then Denby walked in talking just like them; I gave it up when he began to show me what we had in common with Bill and to warn me if Bill doesn’t do it, then it won’t be done. I tried to tell them that I was pleased to see Bill come up for the candidacy, but when he began talking about moving the political goals of the weak and aimless Democratic party toward the right, I got a hunk in my throat. Then, I began to think maybe that is his plan to get by the conservative movements. Again, I failed to be reasonable about the behavior of a politician—knowing that the powerful direct their decisions, and the powerful is that small percentage of the population that controls the wealth of the Nation. Then I said, I still had not forgotten how he had responded to Jesse Jackson in that church in Washington, D.C. It was then that Big Denby had me unFREDERICK C. MOTEN WITH B JENKINS 138 [3.137.221...

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