Rachael Lauren Sotos January 2012 "Barack Obama's Arendtian Arab Spring"

Barack Obama's Arendtian Arab Spring

In his Arab Spring Speech of May 19, 2011 President Obama predicts that "it will be years before this story reaches its end...in some places, change will be swift; in others, gradual...calls for change may give way to fierce contests for power."1 He warns that Americans are likely to find "the scenes of upheaval throughout the region," "unsettling." He nonetheless promises that America will take advantage of the opportunity to support "truly inclusive" democratic reformers, fully aware that "short term interests" may not "align perfectly." Accompanying this reaffirmation of the "new beginning" initiated by the Cairo Speech of June 4, 2009 are a slew of development programs and partnerships, as well as a promise of substantial debt relief for Egypt.2 Donning the cap of historian in his 2011 Arab Spring Speech the President also explains "the forces that are driving" the "extraordinary change" taking place, "square by square; town by town; country by country; the people have risen up to demand their basic human rights." As we might expect, his historical speculations reflect the depth of his moral insight and are consistent with the rhetorical strategy of the earlier Cairo Speech. In the Cairo Speech, we recall, Obama posits not merely an affinity between America and Islam, but a practical identity: "Islam has always been a part of America's story;" "Islam is part of America." If America and the Muslim world can bury a past haunted by the many crimes against Muslim aspirations and dignity during colonialism and continued through the Cold War, they will recover the truth known to the American Founders, that human rights are not the exclusive to the purview of the West; rather, "through words and deeds," "and throughout history," the ecumenical Islamic faith has demonstrated, "the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality." In the words of John Adams, signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, "the United States has in itself no character of
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Rachael Lauren Sotos January 2012 "Barack Obama's Arendtian Arab Spring"

enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims." Two years later, in the wake of the first months of uprisings in 2011, Obama is confirmed in his belief that both Islam and America "share" "principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings." Consequently he recognizes "the forces" propelling the revolutionary Arab youth as America's own. It is the very same forces, Obama explains, that have inspired Americans since the Revolution: Our own nation was founded through a rebellion against an empire. Our people fought a painful civil war that extended freedom and dignity to those who were enslaved. And I would not be standing here today unless past generations turned to the moral force of nonviolence as a way to perfect our union organizing, marching, and protesting peacefully together to make real those words that declared our nation: We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal." This simple narrative of hard won modern rights -- human rights -- is a pithy exemplification of Obama's moral core. As he reveals in his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Speech, besides trust in competent, just and fair policies, the young American President is bolstered by two interrelated insights: first, by an awareness of the "irreducible" something "that we all share;" and second, by "the continued expansion of our moral imagination."3 His process of reflection and recognition, discovering the deep frustration, ihbat, felt throughout Muslim-majority nations in the Arab world, to be consonant with the modern quest for human rights broadly understood, as well as with "the American dream" more specifically, is an exemplification of such an exercise of the moral imagination. Consequent to this empathy exercise, the President is able to affirm his personal faith, that, in the long run, the revolutions of the Arab Spring "will bring about a world that is more peaceful, more stable, and more just." As it turns out, President Obama's patience with the long arc of history has not assuaged reactionary anxieties, a fact which the irresponsible verbiage of election year political posturing in America makes all too clear. Fortunately, there are, as Obama puts it in his Arab Spring
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Rachael Lauren Sotos January 2012 "Barack Obama's Arendtian Arab Spring"

Speech, "many reasons to be hopeful." Tawakkol Karman, the 32 year old Yemeni mother of three, and recipient of the 2011 Noble Peace Prize, is certainly one such reason to be optimistic and we find additional encouragement in her effusive praise for the non-violent proclivities of the "the Arab revolutionary youth," " leading today's peaceful struggle against tyranny and corruption with moral courage and political wisdom."4 In the words of Siraj Moasser, a 26-year old Libyan, interviewed by Borzou Daragahi in the Financial Times: "We are the ones who made the revolution...If the revolution goes awry, we will make another one. We have nothing to lose."5 To elaborate and deepen Obama's insights on a more theoretical level, our best ally, I submit, is Hannah Arendt, arguably the most prescient and enduring political thinker of the twentieth century. Indeed, as it becomes clear that the revolutions of 2011 mark an epochal turning point, akin to 1968 and 1989, Arendt's significance as the preeminent theorist of participatory freedom also becomes clearer, most amazingly as her political phenomenology, written over 50 years ago, preternaturally anticipates the revolutionary implications of contemporary social media.6 A half century before anyone was "friended" or sent a "tweet," Arendt explains the "boundless" dynamics of popular power manifest in virtual reality, the intangible "web" of human relations, "the space of appearances." Power, Arendt teaches, is most fundamentally the "potentiality in being together;" it cannot be "possessed like strength or applied like force," but is the "intangible in-between" brought into being and preserved only in living words and deeds. Its remarkable dynamism, often triumphant in the face of "vastly superior forces," is understandable as because, "like action," power "is boundless; it has no physical limitation" apart from the necessity of "the existence of other people"(HC 201). And here of course is the root of its potential exponential magnification, when its only physical

Rachael Lauren Sotos January 2012 "Barack Obama's Arendtian Arab Spring"

limitation turns out to be cell phones. In the words of the Tawakkol Karman, our Yemeni heroine, who offers a ground- level account of the boundlessness of popular power in her 2011 Nobel Peace Prize Speech: "thanks to the rapid and astonishing development of information technology and the communications revolution," "mankinds feeling of responsibility to create a decent life and make it worth living with dignity, [always] stronger than the will to kill life.... is strengthened day after day." To put the same point in a different way, the "extraordinary change" has been brought about in no small measure by crowd-sourcing, cell-phone endowed citizens as they have refuted the manipulative and divisive tactics of dictators. And lest we have any doubt that Arendt is a source who will continue to illuminate virtual reality, we need only recall that her political phenomenology precisely speaks to the revolutionary power implicit in the inherently pluralistic "space of appearances:" only where things can be seen by many in a variety of aspects without changing their identity... can worldly reality truly and reliably appear(HC 57). In the context of the present discussion, a most obvious link between Obama and Arendt is the incomparable experience of participatory freedom as empowerment. Consider it thus: to understand how it is that Obama's 2008 presidential campaign slogan, Yes We Can!, was so capriciously adopted and ecstatically displayed in Tunis, Cairo, Damascus, Sana'a and elsewhere, we should to go to the source, to Arendt's account of the "we can." There is a great difference, Arendt teaches -- cribbing from Montesquieu -- between philosophical and political freedom. In the former the individual experiences the freedom of the "I will;" in the latter we find an inherently plural and/or collective experience of the "I can," or, as Obama has it, the "we can."7 This empowered experience of "the we" is not reducible to any individualistic formulation of freedom, be it liberal, Christian, or Romantic. Again, as Arendt teaches via Montesquieu, the "I

Rachael Lauren Sotos January 2012 "Barack Obama's Arendtian Arab Spring"

can" is not a philosophical experience of a subject opposed to the world, wishing, as it were, that the world might be different, but rather, the bodily experience of enjoyment one has of the actual capacity to effect change, a feeling that comes only as part of a "we." Again and again, in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, in the American Civil Rights Movement, the Free Speech Movement, the Prague Spring, Polish Solidarity, in the protests against South African Apartheid, in Tahrir Square, in the Occupation of Wall Street, people have this empowered experience of participatory freedom, but no one has given a more enchanting or precise account than Hannah Arendt. In his Cairo Speech, President Obama, for his part, makes his Arendtian affinity to the "we" explicit as he explains the crucial element that can transcend entrenched skepticism regarding the possibility of real change, This truth transcends nations and peoples -- a belief that isn't new; that isn't black or white or brown; that isn't Christian or Muslim or Jew. It's a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the hearts of billions around the world. It's a faith in other people, and it's what brought me here today. It is this same "faith in other people," we note, that a younger Obama announces in Dreams from my Father cathartically mourning the tragedy of imperialism at his father and grandfather's Kenyan graves.8 He mourns "the silence" that killed "faith in other people," "a faith that wasn't new, that wasn't black or white or Christian or Muslim but that pulsed in the first African village and the first Kansas homestead"(DF 429). Enlivened by such ancient, indeed primordial, faith in the dynamic potential of the "we," Obama appears to have served as a worldwide conduit for Arendt's political theory. But the Cairo and Arab Spring Speeches disclose still deeper Arendtian depths. Perhaps it comes as little surprise, as both Arendt and Obama are advocates of participatory democracy, potestas in populo, but there is a significant parallel between Arendt's mission in On Revolution and the need for individual self-determination Obama recognizes in the Arab revolutionaries' longing for
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freedom.9 Arendt reminds us of "the lost treasure" of the American Revolution, the spaces for and practices of participatory freedom which the Founders, excepting Jefferson, seem to have forgotten when founding the republic. Similarly, Obama argues that the Arab Spring "should not have come as a surprise;" for while independence was won "long ago" among the nations of the Middle East and North Africa, "in too many places their people did not." In this respect we should understand the United States' support for "open discourse" and "the use of technology to connect with and listen to the voices of the people" as an Arendtian recognition that the guarantee of suffrage is essential, but mere representation is far from an adequate institutionalization of the spaces for and practices of participatory freedom: In fact, real reform will not come at the ballot box alone. Through our efforts we must support those basic rights to speak your mind and access information. We will support open access to the Internet, and the right of journalists to be heard whether its a big news organization or a blogger. In the 21st century, information is power; the truth cannot be hidden; and the legitimacy of governments will ultimately depend on active and informed citizens. Energetic Principles Of course we'll never know whether Obama consulted Arendt's On Revolution during the White House study sessions on the Arab Spring he is reported to have led in the first half of 2011, delegating to his aides the task of reporting on some 50 or 60 democratic "transitions."10 But given the fact that in On Revolution warns regarding the ways that modern revolutionaries can go wrong, be it the French Revolution's many imitators, who, swept up by ideology and terror, have been made "the fools of history," or the American Founders' more benign forgetfulness of participatory freedom, it is difficult to imagine that Arendt was not present at the White House study sessions in some form or fashion.11 In his Arab Spring Speech Obama certainly echoes Arendt's analyses of revolutions gone awry and follows her path in political theory by rightly framing the anger and frustration of the Arab Spring as a "longing for freedom."

Rachael Lauren Sotos January 2012 "Barack Obama's Arendtian Arab Spring"

It was the abject degradation of the poor, les malheureux, Arendt explains, that lead Robespierre and the original French revolutionaries to neglect the separation of powers and civil rights, and ultimately to embark on the Reign of Terror. Arendt does not doubt that compassion in the face of "the spectacle of misery" was the original motivation, compelling the sacrifice of the original goal of revolution, liberation from tyranny, even as she abhors the all too predictable submission to a pre-determined historical scheme, "the ideological thinking" that will justify murder in the name of "the people"(OR 57). Echoing Arendt, it would seem, Obama voices his righteous indignation at the "violent extremists." They too, to speak with Arendt, have "used and misused the mighty forces of misery and destitution"(OR 112). Bin Laden's "slaughter of innocents did not answer [the people's] cries for a better life," any more than Robespierre or Stalin solved "the social question"(OR 112). Without "faith in other people" Bin Laden, Obama reminds, "rejected democracy and individual rights for Muslims." Like the notoriously paranoid Robespierre, who, demonized the rich and fetishized the alleged moral purity of the poor, so the faux-martyr Bin Laden, "offered a message of hate an insistence that Muslims had to take up arms against the West, and that violence against men, women and children was the only path to change." And while neither Arendt nor Obama are pacifists, or so naive as to fail to understand that violence and non-violent action sometimes go hand in hand, both understand that violence itself is not generative: "the people of the region have achieved more change in six months than terrorists have accomplished in decades." Obama's Arab Spring Speech reveals its proximity to Arendt first as the President's explanation of the original spark of the revolutions, the self-immolation of the Tunisian Mohammed Bouazizi, follows her Montesquieu-inspired theory of action, and, secondly, as Obama approaches Arab frustration, ihbat, politically. Obama rightly recognizes the need for

Rachael Lauren Sotos January 2012 "Barack Obama's Arendtian Arab Spring"

institutional reform and "individual self-determination," most basically dignity and political rights, but also, equality of opportunity, and, to borrow Arendt's language, "the individual's right to a full development of all his gifts"(OR 72).12 Recall Obama's narration of the Bouazizi's triggering of the new "story of self-determination:" Sometimes, in the course of history, the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has built up for years. In America, think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat. So it was in Tunisia, as that vendors act of desperation tapped into the frustration felt throughout the country. Obama immediately underscores the political cause of Bouazizi's frustration in the Kakfaesque institutions of many Muslim-majority nations in the Arab world: in too many countries, a citizen like that young vendor had nowhere to turn no honest judiciary to hear his case; no independent media to give him voice; no credible political party to represent his views; no free and fair election where he could choose his leader. Obama describes a parallel situation in the economy; "entrepreneurs are brimming with ideas, only to be stifled." Positively expressed, Arendt's political phenomenology illuminates how collectively embodied principles such as "frustration," "demand for dignity" and "longing for freedom," are unique political "springs of action." Like other phenomena pertinent to the "we," these "energetic principles" (Jefferson's reformulations of Montesquieu) are never fully materialized, but are rather unbounded and "inexhaustible(WF 152). Simply put, because Bouazizi's ihbat was so widely shared, with the single click of a cell phone camera, his deed was ready to go viral. Or: in Arabic-enhanced Arendtian speak, we can say that because Bouazizi's ihbat was widely shared, his act of self-disclosure opened "a space of freedom for action that actually sets the constituted body of citizens in motion.13

Rachael Lauren Sotos January 2012 "Barack Obama's Arendtian Arab Spring"

At first blush illumination Arendt's political phenomenology offers perhaps appears commonsensical. But consider Bouazizi's self-immolation in light of Arendt's very precise account of courage as a public phenomenon: It requires courage even to leave the protective security of our four walls and enter the public realm, not because of particular dangers which may lie in wait for us, but because we have arrived in a realm where the concern for life has lost its validity. Courage liberates men from their worry about life for the freedom of the world. Courage is indispensable because in politics not life but the world is at stake.(WF 155) Setting aside whatever quite valid criticism we might have of Arendt's somewhat old-fashioned distinction between freedom and mere life for a moment, Bouazizi's self-sacrifice does precisely exemplify Arendt's idiosyncratic, highly formal definition of "courage." In Arendtian terms his deed presents a pristine exemplum of a political event, a pure phenomenon, "uncontaminated," as it were, by the muck of interests, aims and ideological rationalizations that are inherently part of political life. Bouazizi's incandescent self-disclosure was an act of courage ready to go viral because dignity and the rights of self-determination are not only of deep personal concern to individuals, they are the precondition of the political world, "a realm where the concern for life has lost its validity." His considerable reputation for linguistic virtuosity notwithstanding, Obama's emphatically political account of the Arab Spring never reaches the descriptive heights of Arendt's phenomenology, presenting as she does, public happiness as beatitude and the political life as one of worldly transcendence, a redemption of inauthenticity and bad faith. Still, there are resonances. Obama, as if channeling Arendt, reveals the revolutionary Arab youth conveyed from the darkness of night to the openness and light of day, discovering, as it were, a new heaven on earth in the space of appearances: A new generation has emerged. And their voices tell us that change cannot be denied.

Rachael Lauren Sotos January 2012 "Barack Obama's Arendtian Arab Spring"

In Cairo, we heard the voice of the young mother who said, Its like I can finally breathe fresh air for the first time. In Sanaa, we heard the students who chanted, The night must come to an end.In Benghazi, we heard the engineer who said, Our words are free now. Its a feeling you cant explain.In Damascus, we heard the young man who said, After the first yelling, the first shout, you feel dignity. One ignorant of the events of the last year might assume such elevated experiences of "the political" rarely touch the many people for whom there are "few expectations other than making it through the day, and perhaps the hope that their luck will change." Obama, for his part, knows that "successful democratic transitions depend upon an expansion of growth and broad-based prosperity." His Arendtian intent is clear: the conditions of material deprivation must not be allowed to pervert the foundation of freedom. Aspirations must find upwardly mobile outlets, "the greatest untapped resource in the Middle East and North Africa is the talent of its people." Ever intent to highlight the close proximity between the American dream and the aspirations of the Arab every man, Obama reminds the Arab Spring Speech's audience of Wael Ghonim: "its no coincidence that one of the leaders of Tahrir Square was an executive for Google." But his high-tech exemplum is likewise a reminder of his self-presentation as the hope and promise of equal opportunity in his Cairo Speech of two years before: "my personal story is not so unique. The dream of opportunity for all people has not come true for everyone in America, but its promise exists for all who come to our shores." Bringing these dreams to fruition in the Middle East and North Africa will in large measure be the work of strengthening and developing the institutions of civil society, a point which doubly underscores the potential significance of the myriad projects and partnerships -- in education, medicine, technology, healthcare, energy, environmental policy -- instituted with the Obama Administration's promised "new beginning." Partisans of freedom will note Arendt's own high opinion of "the world-building capacity of man in the human faculty of making and keeping

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Rachael Lauren Sotos January 2012 "Barack Obama's Arendtian Arab Spring"

promises"(OR 175). Indeed, in her estimation it was the preceding "hundred and fifty years of covenant making" in the many endeavors of civil society that gave the early American colonists the confidence to break with monarchialism, and to win the Revolution itself (OR 176). On A New Beginning Arendt is fond of citing Augustine's line, "initium ergo ut esset, creatus est homo;" "that there be a beginning, man was created"(OR 211).14 In On Revolution "the divinity of birth" speaks to "the world's potential salvation." Obama rings true to Arendt here, not because he himself is "the one," "a divine child and savior," but because he too has solicitude for "the new ones," ne/oi, to follow Arendt's Grecism; he too believes that "the human species regenerates itself" with every "new generation," "nova progenies"(OR 211). In Obama's celebration of the technologically adept revolutionary Arab youth -- "a new generation has emerged. And their voices tell us that change cannot be denied" -- we hear the echo of the middle-aged Arendt's praise of the flower children of the nineteen sixties: "this generation seems everywhere characterized by sheer courage, an astounding will to action, and by a no less astounding confidence in the possibility of change."15 Arendt praises the youths' inherent ability to make "a new beginning because they themselves are new beginnings and hence beginners." So Obama concludes the Cairo Speech, On a New Beginning, with a direct plea to "young people of faith," who "more than anyone, have the ability to re-imagine the world, to remake this world." "We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning." In more ways than one Barack Obama exhibits the "pathos of novelty," "the exhilarating awareness of the human capacity of beginning," that Arendt's identifies with the modern "revolutionary spirit" (OR 233). In his Cairo Speech, for example, Obama not only solicits the beginners among the revolutionary Arab youth to join him in forging a new beginning, he also

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Rachael Lauren Sotos January 2012 "Barack Obama's Arendtian Arab Spring"

turns his revolutionary beginner's gaze toward Islam itself. "A student of history," with knowledge of Islam from three continents, Obama speaks with confidence regarding "what Islam is," "what it is not." To be sure, the human faculty of beginning is Islam: "in ancient times and in our times, Muslim communities have been at the forefront of innovation and education." It was innovation in Muslim communities -- (applause) -- it was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Obama, it is true, does pay homage to conservative impulses in his Cairo Speech; he praises the institutions of learning in "the timeless city of Cairo," representing "the harmony between tradition and progress." While he insists that "human progress cannot be denied," he gently encourages the view that "there need not be contradictions between development and tradition." While Obama assures his listeners that he understands how the innovations of globalization and technological advancement naturally produce anxiety and fear, he insists that this situation is in no sense special to Muslim-majority Arab nations; In all nations -- including America -- this change can bring fear. Fear that because of modernity we lose control over our economic choices, our politics, and most importantly our identities -- those things we most cherish about our communities, our families, our traditions, and our faith. The fear of losing control, losing our sense of grounding and our very identities, is, according to Obama, a characteristic feature of the modern condition, "in all nations -- including America." Tellingly, the President's half-admonishing exhortation to Muslim traditionalists recalls the significant play he has with the common Luo expression "being lost" in Dreams from My Father. Throughout Dreams, we recall, Obama, the young historian, meditates on the commonality of modern experience, the tragedy of colonialism, the misery of European peasants throughout most of recorded history. Accordingly, in this text there is a "serious meaning" to

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"being lost" that aptly fits the historical ruptures and dislocations characteristic of modernity generally. One may be "lost" when one abandons one's family, if one is out of contact, even if everyone knows where one is (DF 307). Obama's great uncle says that, the "many young men..lost to...the white man's country...are like ghosts...When they die...No ancestors will be there to welcome them"(DF 388). In literary terms, when Obama plays with "being lost," he no doubt draws a parallel with "the Lost Generation," the cynical, disenchanted generation, scarred by WWI, against whom the Beats (and sometimes Arendt) define themselves. In Dreams Obama's great-uncle is a Luo incarnation of the Lost Generation. Refusing to address the existential condition of modernity, he retreats into a pre-modern escapist fantasy of "the ancestors," "his blind eyes staring out into darkness"(DF 391). As Obama reminds in Cairo, "if we choose to be bound by the past, we will never move forward." In a significant respect, the experience of "beginning" in On Revolution plays a parallel role to "being lost" in Dreams. In The Human Condition beginning appears in close proximity with acting, initiating, setting in motion. On Revolution introduces specifically modern phenomena (allegedly) unknown to classical antiquity. Arendt insists that, "we are entitled to speak of revolution," only where the experience of founding a body politic is embraced on its own terms, that is, in full awareness of beginning something new (OR 34-5). And by Arendt's strict criteria, very few modern revolutionaries qualify for their own vocation. Too few have resisted the impulse to submit their experience of their own agency to a grand historical scheme; even fewer have been wise enough to bring institutions and practices into being that preserve and protect the revolutionary spirit itself. Even the venerable American Founders, Arendt teaches -who never became the fools of history -- understood their own agency very imperfectly, and only belatedly. Indeed the most radical among them, Thomas Paine, the man who first posited the

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inalienable political rights of all men by virtue of birth," preferred to think of himself as a divinely authorized "restorer" of a previous epoch, than embrace himself as beginner of something novel (OR 45). Simply put, in Arendt thinking whether or not one is a "beginner" reflects one's existential position visa via modernity. The "beginners," like those who are "lost," disclose whether they are autonomous actors with some measure of responsibility for their own destinies. In On Revolution, Arendt, like Obama, is gentle and understanding. She knows that confronting contingency, "can bring fear." "Psychologically speaking," the experience of novelty is apt to "make men 'conservative' rather than 'revolutionary', eager to preserve what has been done and to assure its stability rather than open for new things, new developments, new ideas"(OR 41). This is not to say that Arendt is any less relentless in her deconstructive maneuverings ("dismantling," in her quaint terminology), any less annoyed when the American Founders makes appeals to "the Absolute," as for instance in the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence, or dress themselves as Roman Fathers and implicitly institute "blind and indiscriminating" "worship of the Constitution." The fact of the matter is the American Founders failed as beginners as they "remained bound to the conceptual and intellectual framework of the European tradition"(OR 195). The irony of the present constellation is that we would not apply quite the same explanation in all cases of stunted beginnings. As Obama, "the student of history," reminds his audience at Cairo, echoing Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, the tradition of Islam has not been burdened by the same "conceptual and intellectual framework;" "in ancient times and in our times, Muslim communities have been at the forefront of innovation." Traditionally speaking, innovation is not a transgression against Allah. Speaking with Shakespeare's Hamlet, Obama would say that "the time is out of joint" in many Muslim communities, as it was for the

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American Founders. But this is due to more recent historical factors -- the Cold War, the legacy of colonialism -- not to Islam itself. As the young President reminds us in the Cairo Speech, it is not just a matter of "majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation," modernity itself is owed to Islam: It was Islam -- at places like Al-Azhar -- that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities -- (applause) -- it was innovation in Muslim communities... And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality. (Applause.) To conclude: by the lights of Arendt's On Revolution Barack Obama's Cairo Speech bears all the weight and all the promise of "the revolutionary spirit." Against the backdrop of stunted beginners, the young American President exhibits more "pathos of novelty" than the American Founders. Moreover, the "new beginning...based on mutual interest and mutual respect" actually better fulfills Arendt's criteria of true revolution. In On Revolution Arendt hopes to see a nonviolent revolutionary spirit that succeeds in founding something new, a new space for freedom. She is dissatisfied with Hobbesian claims of "the state of nature," intent always to circumscribe the power of the people. She is tired of the centuries-old conviction, inherited in political theory from Machiavelli, but existent at least since the story of Cain and Abel; as if, "whatever brotherhood human beings may be capable of has grown out of fratricide, whatever political organization men may have achieved its origin in crime"(OR 20). Arendt hopes for non-violent revolutionaries who can demonstrate "the plausibility" of the first line of St. John, "for the state of human affairs;" "in the beginning was the Word"(OR 20). Obama, who gives such good speeches, is just such a non-violent revolutionary, a real beginner. His Cairo Speech and the subsequently inspired revolutionary actions that have sprung up across North Africa and the Middle East prove Obama to be a beginner who embodies the principle of freedom, that is,

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beginning itself. In Arendt's thinking such a beginning precludes the need for the establishment authority as it is traditionally construed. Obama's promised "new beginning" is a beginning that "carries its own principle within itself," "a law of action for those who have joined him...to partake in the enterprise and to bring about its accomplishment"(OR 212-3). Such a beginning implies a non-foundational foundation, the constant political labor of "active and informed citizens." In the immortal words of the revolutionary Arab youth Siraj Moasser, "We are the ones who made the revolution...If the revolution goes awry, we will have to make another one." Notes
1

Barack Obama, "A Moment of Opportunity," http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/05/19/remarkspresident-barack-obama-prepared-delivery-moment-opportunity. Retrieved January 7, 2012. 2 Cairo Speech; http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-cairo-university-6-04-09. Retrieved January 7, 2012. 3 Obama's 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Speech; http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-presidentacceptance-nobel-peace-prize. Retrieved January 7, 2012. 4 Tawakkol Karman; http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2011/karman-lecture_en.html. Retrieved January 7, 2012. 5 Borzou Daragahi, "Revolutionary Arab youths cast about for political voice," Financial Times December 30, 2011, p.4. 6 Hannah Arendt, Human Condition, Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 1998, 1958 henceforth cited parenthetically HC. 7 Hannah Arendt, "What is Freedom?" in Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought, New York, Penguin 2006, Originally published Viking 1961, p. 157. Hereafter cited parenthetically WF. 8 Barack Obama. Dreams from My Father: a Story of Race and Inheritance. New York: Three Rivers Press 2004, 1995 p.429 Hereafter parenthetically cited DF. 9 Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, New York: Penguin 1990, originally published 1963 Viking. Hereafter cited parenthetically OR. 10 Mark Landler, "Obama Seeks Reset in Arab World," New York Times May 12, 2011 p.A12 (New York Edition). 11 Ryan Lizza, "The Consequentialist: How the Arab Spring remade Obama's foreign policy" in The New Yorker, May 2, 2100. A "senior official" comments on the Obama's study group investigating, "all of the revolutions in history, especially the ones that are driven from the ground up, and they tend to be very chaotic and hard to find an equilibrium...The French Revolution...ended up in chaos, and they ended up with Bonaparte.Mark Landler's New York Times piece cited above is more specific regarding the results of the study group's investigations: "They have found that Egypt is analogous to South Korea, the Philippines and Chile, while a revolution in Syria might end up looking like Romanias." 12 There is not space here to engaged the vexed question of Arendt's perhaps overwrought distinction between economic and political motivations. Fortunately for the purposes of the present discussion the question is moot as Arendt makes clear that neither the twentieth century demand for "equality of opportunity" or nineteenth century liberalism's discovery of the individual's right to develop one's talents, both of views are preeminent in American understandings of freedom and feature prominently in Obama's representation of the aspirations of the Arab Spring. See On Revolution, p.72. 13 Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind One Volume Edition Volume II Willing San Diego, New York Harcourt 1977, 1978, p.199. 14 Augustine, De Civitate XII, 20.

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15

Hannah Arendt, On Violence, Orlando, New York Harcourt 1969, 1970, p16.

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