Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Barbara Leckie, Professor, English and the Institute for the Comparative Study of Literature, Art, and Culture; Academic Director, Re.Climate: Centre for Climate Communication and Public Engagement, Carleton University
At 7 p.m. on Day 71 of Donald Trump’s presidency, United States Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, rose to speak on the Senate floor. He did not cede his right to speech (“the right to recognition”) until 25 hours later, at 8:05 p.m. the following day.
While the form of his speech resembled a filibuster — a prolonged speech designed to delay or prevent legislation — Booker’s speech was not aimed at any proposed law. Instead he was responding to what he called a “time of crisis” in the United States.
That crisis, in Booker’s view, is driven by the actions of the Trump administration, including executive orders and other actions that he argued are eroding democracy, exacerbating the climate crisis and dismantling programs that offer life-saving support to both Americans and people around the world.
Booker set a record for the longest continuous speech in the U.S. Senate, surpassing speeches by Ted Cruz in 2013 and Strom Thurmond in 1957. He had no food, bathroom or sitting breaks.
Booker’s speech, both a physical feat and a call to action, has been much lauded. But while the content of his speech and its calls for cross-aisle collaboration are admirable, as a literary critic, I believe the form of his speech deserves equal attention.
How Booker delivered the speech helps to bring into focus his call for a participatory democracy — where everyone is actively involved — using two main strategies: interruption of the current norm (disruption), and an appeal to collaboration (working together).
Stanford University Press
Based on my work in the climate humanities, interruption and working together are among the most effective and necessary ways to generate political action.
Two forms of interruption
Two contrasting forms of interruption are important here: interruption that fosters reflection and interruption that discounts it.
The German philosopher Walter Benjamin developed the concept of interruption in the 1930s as a way to foster thinking in times of crisis.
Some types of theatre, for example, interrupt their story to break with conventions and remind viewers that they’re watching a play. Building on Benjamin’s idea of interruption, I’m interested in how interruption can work in our current era of political crisis.
The Trump administration practises the second form of interruption that discounts thinking.
The administration’s technique of “flooding the zone,” for example, produces new actions in such quick succession that the conditions for thinking are eviscerated.
Trump’s preferred mode of communication has also been social media, known for its short and punchy delivery. These communication strategies — flooding the zone and short social media posts — scatter attention.
With the speed and volume of the Trump administration’s actions, it can feel impossible to respond to — let alone reflect on — every executive order, every overreach, every unconstitutional or illegal move.
A communication shift?
Until recently, the U.S. Democratic Party has neither changed the form of their political practice nor the form of their communications in any significant way.
I believe that shifted last week.
When Booker chose to rise in the Senate, he adopted Benjamin’s version of interruption — by changing the form. In this case, through a congressional address with the time-honoured practice of not ceding the floor.
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His single, extended action of uninterrupted speech (except for questions and a prayer) was exactly the opposite of flooding the zone.
His 25-hour speech commanded and held attention. It was exactly the opposite of a hastily dispatched social media post.
He asked his audience to listen in a form that reminded them of what listening demands. Stopping. Paying attention. Thinking. Acting.
Working together: ‘We, the people’
Booker stood alone at the podium for over 25 hours but he did not act alone.
His speech is a powerful performance of collaboration and working together. This recognition of a collective debt to others is also mirrored in his repetition of the phrase “we, the people.”
Here, too, the form of his speech is revealing. Literary critics pay attention to how documents open and close and how words are used and repeated.
His first words acknowledge his debt to the “pages …the folks that work the door, the clerks, the Parliamentarians.” And his last words return to this point, thanking again “the pages… the Parlimentarian staffs … the clerks …the doorkeepers.”
Throughout the speech, he reminds his audience that the people are “stronger together”. His words alone cannot stop the dismantling of democracy, he insists, but “we, the people” can.
The form of his address is an expansive act of inclusion and working together. It incorporates questions to his audience, letters, poetry and literature, questions from the floor, community stories and historical examples.
Two questions inform his speech overall: “Did you speak up?” and “what can I do?” (the first is repeated with variations 52 times and the second 36 times).
Questions invite connection, participation, response and more questions. Booker’s answer to the linked questions is to “stand up, speak up” and promote the collective action of the people.
One form of standing up and speaking up is writing letters to one’s political representatives. Over the course of his speech, Booker gave voice to these constituents and in doing so widened the circle of representation in Congress: “I am trying to elevate the voices,” he said, “that don’t get to come to this place — voices I am hearing from, voices that identify themselves as a Republican veteran, a Democrat.”
The letters he read generate connection, closed gaps, and, like questions, invite further responses.
Booker’s recitation of poetry and literature was similarly inclusive and expansive. He used his platform to share Langston Hughes’s lines, “To save the dream for one / It must be saved for all,” Alice Walker’s comment that, “the most common way people give up their power is not realizing they have it in the first place,” and a translation from the Bantu language, “I am because we are,” among many others.
Bending the form
In short, Booker bent the form of the congressional address to encourage “thousands of ignition points,” thousands of creative ways to bend the form and work together.
He joins his voice to those of his constituents, literary and historical figures, Americans past and future, and to others around the world in an effort, as he put it — adapting the words of Martin Luther King Jr. — “to bend the arc of our nation … toward justice.”
The endurance and content of Booker’s speech is important, but its form most interrupted this moment of political upheaval, invited its listeners to notice and think, and offered examples of “coming together” to support others, listen to their voices, share their stories and be “stronger together.”
Barbara Leckie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
– ref. Trump, interrupted: Cory Booker’s 25-hour Senate speech calls for collective action – https://theconversation.com/trump-interrupted-cory-bookers-25-hour-senate-speech-calls-for-collective-action-253819