At the center of the American national narrative is progress. The supposed ongoing propulsion into the future is not only about direction or momentum; it is also suffused with moral meaning. Our progress, as promulgated by its boosters, has been toward a more perfect union. The historic promises of personal liberty, democratic self-rule based in law and not monarchical declaration, and an expansive frontier were the first emblems of said perfect union. Untold growth and endless wealth anchored this notion of forward movement in the twentieth century as the American Dream, with its promises of unimpeded social mobility.
As is almost always the case, the national narrative is told from the perspective of the settler, the slave master, the disciple of the American Century. The dark realities of expansion, buttressed by the backbreaking labor of enslaved people, are the quiet parts of this story. If optimism is the disposition of the victor, then what is the outlook of the victim or survivor of conquest and domination?
For Sara Marcus, an assistant professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, it is disappointment. In a new book, “Political Disappointment,” Marcus describes the titular emotion as “untimely desire” or “a longing for fundamental change that outlasts a historical moment when it might have been fulfilled.” The desire persists even when its fulfillment has been irretrievably delayed. Marcus shows the ways in which Black activists and writers, in particular, have continued to express their political desires. In doing so, she draws our attention to the centrality of disappointment in American political life. The failures of political movements—whether to achieve a multiracial democracy or a social revolution centered on the Black working class or women’s liberation—threw off the timing of progress.
Marcus is also challenging the assumption that disappointment is bad or should be avoided in politics. On the left, she writes, we constantly avert the bad news of failure by finding its silver lining: that “we’d shown how scared the bosses were of our cause, or we’d trained new activists or we’d gotten people talking about our issues.” There is a fear of finality with failure, whereas Marcus is pulling her readers toward the continuity of desire for change.