of elites and the already powerful as the forces that construct and wield “universality” as a tool in service of their (particular) power and privilege, I will argue throughout this book that it is just as necessary for underdog challengers to articulate differently framed “universalities,” even if such operations are rife with additional moral and strategic dilemmas. As such, I embrace “the 99%” for strategic reasons and assert that its ambiguity is necessary for the construction of an alternative hegemonic alignment. That the scope of such universalizing rhetorical moves can be expanded by subsequent movements (notably Black Lives Matter) does not negate the political value of the former move.
Five years after the gathering at Zuccotti Park was disbanded, it is abundantly clear that a still-emerging progressive political alignment has indeed taken the core of its populist language from Occupy Wall Street. The unexpected popularity of self-identified democratic socialist Bernie Sanders—unexpected by the punditry, but also by many in the left—in his campaign for the presidency is at this point probably the most notable next manifestation of the nascent alignment.
Holding up a mirror
“As we see our face, figure, and dress in the glass…so in imagination we perceive in another’s mind some thought of our appearance, manners, aims, deeds, character, friends, and so on, and are variously affected by it. A self-idea of this sort seems to have three principal elements: the imagination of our appearance to the other person; the imagination of his judgment of that appearance, and some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or mortification…The thing that moves us to pride or shame is not the mere mechanical reflection of ourselves, but an imputed sentiment, the imagined effect of this reflection upon another’s mind.”
—Charles Cooley, The Looking Glass Self43
Let us imagine a particular group imagining itself through the reflection of the perceptions of other groups or of the larger society—through the others’ impressions, associated meanings, and stereotypes about the particular group. We can also imagine the reverse: the larger society glimpsing something of itself in the reflection of a particular group (that is contained within itself). In this way, we can conceive of a powerful challenger movement as “holding up a mirror” in which society recognizes its own reflection. Society sees parts of itself that had escaped its conscious gaze, and, thereby, society re-imagines itself.
Sociologist George Mead discussed how particular “individuals stand out as symbolic. They represent, in their personal relationships, a new order, and then become representative of the community as it might exist if it were fully developed along the lines that they had started.”44 If we substitute Mead’s “individual” with an individuated collective actor, and substitute “the community” with society, we can conceptualize how Occupy Wall Street became symbolically representative of society “as it might exist if it were fully developed along the lines” that Occupy started. Thus, Occupy Wall Street held up a mirror and we recognized ourselves in the reflection—not just we the self-selecting individuals who physically took the park and the streets in New York’s financial district; “America” itself saw itself in this mirror, saw its own condition: saw the level of economic inequality and political disenfranchisement it had come to tolerate. We might compare it to waking up ten years after a traumatizing disaster, catching a glimpse of oneself in the mirror, and finally seeing oneself clearly again; reconnecting with the hint of one’s precious long-lost soul in a glimmer in one’s own eyes, after having identified for so long with the shell one had become; like a feeling of returned wholeness after years of fragmentation and anomie.45 In that reflection were Wall Street and capitalism and the power they had attained over our material and moral universe. In that reflection were the failures of our political representatives to represent public interests and even, in their dominant discourse, to represent a recognizable picture of most people’s reality. In that reflection was a lack of popular collective power. And in that reflection was an intuitive ringing truth; that, yes, we are the 99%, a re-imagined public ready to unify and claim our share.
In a sense then, Occupy Wall Street provided the mirror for a new unification to recognize itself as a “community” with shared interests, as a revived public. At the center of that reflection of a broader community, there was the core, which we might call Occupy Proper: those who were most active, explicitly as part of OWS, and who therefore felt intense ownership and identification with the named group. Occupy Proper operated as a symbol and the signifier of the very existence of the larger unification, the newly re-imagined community. The imagined community, however, was far larger than Occupy Proper.46 Its projection included, in a sense, all of America—even the “one percent,” insofar as Occupy’s signature slogan, “We are the 99%!” was a new class-conscious framing of the whole national public, including the class antagonism within it.
However, Occupy Proper also saw itself distinctly individuated in the mirror. And it sometimes mistook itself and its bounds for the whole community of concern, rather than seeing itself as a symbol and special agent in the service of a much larger social unification. This smaller individuated core, in this narrower reading of the mirror, was comprised of those who physically occupied and participated in the occupations’ recognized upkeep and projects. If the boundaries of such a core were to become too clearly delineated, it would lose its ability to activate and influence the direction of a larger movement. To go in this self-enclosing direction, its growth trajectory would have to rely only on bringing more people into the core itself, through inspiration, self-selection, and replication (i.e., occupying more public parks). More and more individuals would join Occupy—and assimilate into its distinctive subculture—until it somehow reached a critical mass. Many occupiers implicitly believed this to be the path to scaled growth. America could join Occupy Proper, but only entirely on the latter’s own terms.
The problem with this smaller reading of the mirror is that as soon as the symbol circumscribes itself as a neatly bounded object unto itself, it ceases to be the signifier of a larger unification. It loses its magical properties and its symbolic power. It shrinks and is distorted into an other. As an other, it loses its power to name and catalyze the larger unification. The social fragments that were in the process of becoming an ascendant political unification instead become inoculated against the initial catalyzing agent, Occupy Proper (i.e., those dirty hippies in the park who won’t stop drumming). The mirror that the nascent unification caught a glimpse of itself in becomes a picture of a stranger.
The moment the newly framed unification caught a glimpse of itself in the mirror was the same moment that constituted Occupy Wall Street’s initial success. At this moment, the core of the embryonic movement faced its first test of maturity. For a fleeting moment—perhaps two months—it seemed as if sun, moon, and stars orbited around the movement and its intervention. Incredible attention focused on the individuals who occupied—i.e., Occupy Proper. Paradoxically, to succeed politically, we had to use the attention directed at us to shift attention to a broader public, i.e., to our new and prescient articulation of unification: a public-as-protagonist in an unfolding epoch. We had to avoid staring too much at our own narrow reflection in the mirror—the trap of narcissism—and becoming unwitting accomplices to our opponents’ playbook one-two punch: first, to brand us as special (i.e., as a particular; an other) and then as especially malignant, thereby hindering our ability to catalyze a larger force, by inoculating enough of the public against us.
The movement’s active core had to remain in the story, but as a popular symbol of the values and aspirations of many different sorts of people. Like a guest at a party who suddenly finds herself at the center of everyone’s attention and praise, a nascent movement has to resist talking on and on about herself or allowing the conversation to stay focused on her personally. Her presence may be captivating and novel at first, but soon the other guests will grow bored. Instead, she uses her soapbox to strategically draw attention to other situations, stories, and symbols; situations, stories, and symbols that draw additional scrutiny to her opponents and to the crises she has eloquently named. She speaks not about herself but directly to the identification her audience feels with her cause. She invites that grain of awakening identification to
