“I’m Still Standing for Hope and Glory!”

Abstract

The Obama phenomenon hit even remote corners of the world – like the small Swedish town where I caught myself for the first time ever watching an American president's inaugural speech – as a historically significant event.1 It was remarkable not only because the new American president was black but also because he radiated the ambition to perform wise leadership. The question remains however: What is so hopeful about Obama? In this article I will explore this question through the concepts of resentment and cosmopolitanism in politics from an emotionsociological perspective. My discussion will draw on the Obama phenomenon (not his person) as it appears from this perspective and I will be using excerpts from Obama's Cairo speech as “clarifying depictions”( Goffman 1986). The Cairo speech is illustrative because it presents Obama's vision of global unity. I will start with a discussion of the role of emotions in politics and a critique of its displacement in the Western political tradition, to be followed by the politics of resentment and the politics of cosmopolitanism.