Doubt and Sarah Palin

Perhaps the thing that defines modernity best is radical doubt. Contemporary ideas about what it means to be an experiencing and knowing person - so wonderfully traced through their historical trajectories by Charles Taylor in Sources of the Self - reflect constantly on a kind of agnosticism and uncertainty. At times like this - when capitalism is in crisis and politics is a moral ruin (in my country, anyway) certainty of any kind is a problem, and faith in the future deeply unfashionable - then doubt is in command.

All around us doubt is institutionalized. Doubt about the identity and probity of citizens is a critical element of the modern State, doubt about the propriety of financial transactions and the truth of claims is central to the direction of prudent commerce. Doubt about matters of faith and science is built in to the social mechanisms of multi-cultural societies and the funding mechanisms of the academy. Doubt is everywhere - always excepting the processes of Darwinian evolution as they are currently understood, where no matters of doubt are permitted amongst otherwise rational doubters.


And then there is Sarah Palin. A person for whom doubt itself is in doubt. She is giving up to be strong. Quitting to carry on. Not retreating but advancing elsewhere. She has no plans except the plans she has. She wants to serve but objects to politics. It's hard to understand what forces are at work here. It seems to me that in a time of doubt, Sarah Palin has nothing to fear except doubt itself.


For those that prefer rigorous doubt to Sarah Palin, I recommend Jennifer Michael Hecht's Doubt: A History, (Harper Collins: San Francisco, 2003). This is a beautifully written book, by an author who wears her considerable learning very lightly.