ABSTRACT
This chapter describes political risks of becoming minor—or "'68"—by embracing Utopian logics and tonal disruptions of theoretical, descriptive, and analytic norms in and outside of the academy. The risk of taking on a politics of hegemony without dominance is a big one, for it seeks to transform the scene of power's intelligibility, not just by changing the kinds of persons who manage it. A "minor" politics would therefore make both "leadership" and "participation" in subaltern and public spheres difficult, the writer/teacher/activist no longer owning a translatable ground of authority to support her claim to "representational" status. The chapter discusses a brutally ironic action of veiling and revelation. In contrast to Branch's history, which links the holocaust of little girls to the March on Washington, Cliff links it to the most analogous "national" scene of death in 1963, John F. Kennedy's assassination, which carries with it its own always intensifying visual fascination and memorial power.
