By and large, descriptions of the US federal government shutdown have followed rational, even quantitative models. There are charts, lists, numbers, items, and stories that outline the specific and general effects, both nationally and locally. To be sure, there is much opinion on the shutdown that bears tenuous relation to logic. Sarah Palin, for example, described the shutdown as a “pinprick,” noted President Obama’s statement, referring to proposed military strikes in Syria, that the US “doesn’t do pinpricks,” and said “but sometimes we elect them” – a use of “pinprick” so acrobatic in its logic that it would qualify her statement as more of an emotional tone poem than a didactic critique. But underlying the variety in rhetoric, regardless of its persuasiveness, there is a solid base of concrete information. The media have described the federal government, not comprehensively, but nevertheless in very clear, definable aspects through outlining the suspension of its activities.
When Hobbes referred to the ultimate sovereign authority governing a society as “Leviathan,” he described something much larger, more sublime, and more mysterious than the US federal government in the amalgamation of its departments and services. It is both too easy and too quick to equate Leviathan with a government so concretely conceived. Subsequent discourse has expanded the use of the term to include many different kinds of social authority. So with the partial government shutdown unfolding in its complex but graspable ways, I do not ask after the small “l” leviathan (the pinprick leviathan). Rather, I ask after this larger, ungraspable but eminently palpable Leviathan that infuses reality with its strange and multitudinous forces. I ask what would happen if this Leviathan were to partially shut down. What would that look like? What would open up?
