Prophetic Politics

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JAN HANSKA Because the past is altered, the present can be described as something entirely different from the common description. Thus the prophetic politician is able to create crises even when they do not exist, and this ability to portray the society as facing a crisis at any chosen moment is crucial to prophetic politics since it acts as a way of avoiding situations of political or social stasis or stagnation. The idea of causality also allows the prophetic politician to describe and narrate a plausible future. Since he has already altered the past to create a certain kind of present, it is easy to offer solutions and predict their eventual outcomes (these predictions can involve both failures in realizing his vision and those occasions when the solutions offered are accepted and the golden future comes one step closer). As Catherine Kohler Riessman argues, ‘the “truths” of narrative accounts are not in their faithful representations of a past world, but in the shifting connections they forge among past, present and future’ (2004: 35). All narrators interpret the past in their stories rather than producing the past as it was. Prophetic storytelling is simultaneously self-making and world-making activity where the identity and context of the past, present and future are delineated and a unified conception of reality is projected into the world. (Gutterman, 2005: 22) Politics that concern today must not limit themselves to making today better but essentially they must create, primarily narratively, but also in a more concrete manner, the future. Former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig argued that ‘to make foreign policy for a powerful state is, to a degree, to make the future.’ (1984: 13) When a narrator foreshadows his narrative, he considers ‘the present not for itself, but as a harbinger of an already determined future.’ (Ochs-Capps, 2001: 5) The narrator presents events and casts characters in such a way that he gives the impression of knowing what the future will hold. The past is merely a waypoint on the teleological path into predetermined events if the right political choice or decision is made. Every moment is a crossroads where the way of the vision leads to a glorious future and the other way leads to a despair or gloom of some sort. For the object of all politics, the citizen, this process of choosing manifests itself most clearly in the form of elections. The political parlance prior to elections is full of promises and visions of a better future if one particular politician is chosen. Elections are full of hollow words and promises to be broken, but relatively seldom are there actual visionary prophecies of better times to come. It is hard to define whether this or that political promise to the electorate is prophetic or not since the scale is gradual. Everyday promises of ‘a chicken in every pot’ or reducing unemployment are not much as prophesies go. But visioning, for example, a future where America ‘shines as a beacon of hope to all those who long for freedom and a better world’ (Reagan 4. 11. 1983) is communicating a prophecy. The glorious future must be narrated to always be just within and just out of reach at the same time. A view of the future of America in which it might potentially become the true fulfillment of the Kingdom of 106 Perspectives Vol. 17, No. 2 2009
PROPHETIC POLITICS God on earth one day is a powerful motivator, since it remains in front of the citizenry, always beckoning, always calling the people to strive further towards a golden future while at the same time always remaining unattainable like a mirage. A true prophetic vision in politics must never be actualized because that would be the point where progress terminates. Politics cannot allow itself to ever reach the perfect society it strives for. Should it happen that prophetic politics would promise something tangible, palpable and above all measurable and fail to deliver on that promise, the guilt of failure would come into existence and would have to be expiated or removed. This expiation would be a complex process and a prophetic politician is indeed able to make it unnecessary. As long as his promises of deliverance are vague and ambivalent enough so that there can be no claims as to them not having come true, the need for expiation does not arise. As Boorstin claims, vagueness is a great resource of America because uncertainties are the producers of optimism and energy. ‘If other nations had been held together by common certainties, Americans were being united by a common vagueness.’ (1965: 219) De Tocqueville writes that in religion, everything is ‘classified, coordinated, foreseen, decided in advance’ and in politics, it is ‘agitated, contested, uncertain.’ (2000: 43) The ambiguousness of the political world can be eradicated by an infusion of religion. Uncertain issues can be endowed with a semblance of certainty derived from the divine plan according to which things must ultimately go. Therefore prophetic politics makes it possible for the unstable realm of politics to seem and feel more stable and thus to offer more of a sense of security for the people. The vagueness still remains, since prophetic politics only seems to offer certainties by the leadership, but this is an illusion. Boorstin also argues that the ‘very uncertainties which inspired and exhilarated Americans also made them feel a special need of reassurance. The more uncertain its destiny, the more necessary to declare it “manifest.”’ (Ibid.: 274) It is the vagueness and not the ‘manifestness’ of the national destiny which is the great power of American national and political life. THE GENRE OF PROPHETIC NARRATION A similar vagueness is a characteristic of the genres the prophetic political narratives belong to. Ambiguousness situates the story between genres. Frye writes that ‘the tragic hero is typically on top of the wheel of fortune, halfway between human society on the ground and the something greater in the sky. Prometheus, Adam, and Christ hang between heaven and earth, between a world of paradisical freedom and the world of bondage.’ (1957: 207) This metaphor of a wheel of fortune is fitting for prophetic politics. At the top the wheel is able to turn either way once it reaches the perilous equilibrium. The prophetic politician as a narrator can portray each moment as if the society were precariously balanced at the top. The citizenry is cast as the machinery which spins the wheel in either direction by making right or Perspectives Vol. 167, No. 2 2009 107
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Prophetic Politics

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