Obama and the Image.

This paper argues that in the spring of 2008 a new political movement appeared in the United States, a movement not aware of itself until that moment. It was a movement grown among multiple publics that did not fit the pre-defined scripts of identity politics. It was a grass-roots initiative of citizens bearing witness to their collective responsibility in the eyes of a global public sphere that found its own visibility in and through the campaign of Barack Obama. The paper is primarily a discussion of this collective image of which the image of Obama is also part. The discussion of the collective image also includes some consideration of the new media forms that facilitate the free circulation of images, media that deterritorialise political control and democratise its distribution. Part I introduces this collective image, and was written just after the US Presidential nominating conventions. Part II was written while waiting for the results of the 2008 presidential election, and engages directly with Mitchell's argument regarding the lives of images. Part III, written after Obama's victory, considers what might be said by this event, and speculates on the political future of the empowering image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]