Creolizing Rousseau PDF
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Creolizing Rousseau .................18664$ $$FM 11-21-1413:22:01 PS PAGEi CreolizingtheCanon Serieseditors:JaneAnnaGordon,AssociateProfessorofPoliticalScience andAfricanaStudies,UniversityofConnecticutandNeilRoberts,Associate ProfessorofAfricanaStudiesandFacultyAffiliateinPoliticalScience, WilliamsCollege Thisseries,publishedinpartnershipwiththeCaribbeanPhilosophical Association,revisitscanonicaltheoristsinthehumanitiesandsocialsciences throughthelensofcreolization.Itoffersfreshreadingsoffamiliarfigures andpresentsthecaseforthestudyofformerlyexcludedones. CreolizingRousseaueditedbyJaneAnnaGordonandNeilRoberts Hegel,FreudandFanonStefanBird-Pollan .................18664$ $$FM 11-21-1414:51:40 PS PAGEii Creolizing Rousseau Edited by Jane Anna Gordon and Neil Roberts London•NewYork .................18664$ $$FM 11-21-1413:22:04 PS PAGEiii PublishedbyRowman&LittlefieldInternationalLtd UnitA,WhitacreMews,26-34StannaryStreet,LondonSE114AB www.rowmaninternational.com Rowman&LittlefieldInternationalLtd.isanaffiliateofRowman&Littlefield 4501ForbesBoulevard,Suite200,Lanham,Maryland20706,USA WithadditionalofficesinBoulder,NewYork,Toronto(Canada),andPlymouth(UK) www.rowman.com Copyright(cid:2)2015byJaneAnnaGordon,NeilRobertsandcontributors Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereproducedinanyformorbyany electronicormechanicalmeans,includinginformationstorageandretrievalsystems, withoutwrittenpermissionfromthepublisher,exceptbyareviewerwhomayquote passagesinareview. BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary ISBN:HB978-1-78348-280-1 PB978-1-78348-281-8 LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData CreolizingRousseau/editedbyJaneAnnaGordonandNeilRoberts. pagescm Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. ISBN978-1-78348-280-1(cloth:alk.paper)—ISBN978-1-78348-281-8(pbk.:alk. paper)—ISBN978-1-78348-282-5(electronic) 1.Rousseau,Jean-Jacques, 1712–1778—Politicalandsocialviews. 2.Politicalscience—Philosophy. 3.Political science—CaribbeanArea. I.Gordon,JaneAnna,1976– II.Roberts,Neil,1976– author. JC179.R9C686 2015 320.092—dc23 2014038881 (cid:3)(cid:2)(cid:4) ThepaperusedinthispublicationmeetstheminimumrequirementsofAmerican NationalStandardforInformationSciences—PermanenceofPaperforPrintedLibrary Materials,ANSI/NISOZ39.48-1992. PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica .................18664$ $$FM 11-21-1413:22:04 PS PAGEiv Contents Introduction:TheProjectofCreolizingRousseau 1 JaneAnnaGordonandNeilRoberts 1 ComparativePoliticalTheory,Creolization,andReading RousseauthroughFanon 19 JaneAnnaGordon 2 BetweenMestic¸agemandCosmopolitanism:TowardsaNew SocialArithmetic 61 AlexisNouss 3 BeyondNe´gritudeandCre´olite´:OnCreolizingthe CitizenshipContract 75 MickaellaL.Perina 4 Ante´norFirmin,Jean-JacquesRousseau,andRacialInequality 103 CarolynFluehr-Lobban 5 RousseauandFanononInequalityandtheHumanSciences 121 NelsonMaldonado-Torres 6 C.L.R.James,PoliticalPhilosophy,andtheCreolizingof RousseauandMarx 143 PagetHenry 7 Rousseau,theMaster’sTools,andAnti-Contractarian Contractarianism 171 CharlesW.Mills 8 Rousseau,Flight,andtheFallintoSlavery 193 NeilRoberts v .................18664$ CNTS 11-21-1408:39:58 PS PAGEv vi Contents 9 PachaMama,Rousseau,andtheFemini:HowNatureCan RevivePolitics 225 NaliniPersram 10 VirtuousBacchanalia:CreolizingRousseau’sFestival 253 ChijiAko.maandSallyJ.Scholz Bibliography 279 Index 299 AbouttheContributors 307 .................18664$ CNTS 11-21-1408:39:58 PS PAGEvi Introduction The Project of Creolizing Rousseau Jane Anna Gordon and Neil Roberts In a lecture presented in Montreal in 1967, C. L. R. James, the much- celebratedAfro-Trinidadian Marxist and anti-colonialjournalist, historian, sociopoliticaltheorist,novelist,playwrightandessayist,criticizedthesuper- ficial ways in which the person and thought of eighteenth-century Genevan Jean-JacquesRousseauwereoftensummarilydismissed.1Whetherasapoliti- cal progenitor, in Bertrand Russell’s account, of the descent of the modern world into the anti-rational and anti-scientific barbarism of Nazism and fas- cism,orastheprototypeofthe personalityoftheerraticmanofgeniuswho does not realize when he is acting the fool, all dismissals were lamentable given the genuine uniqueness of Rousseau and his importance, second only toKarlMarxinJames’sview,asafigureinmodernhistory.2Therewas,after all, a way in which in ‘‘every single thing [Rousseau] touched . . . brought intoexistencesomethingnewwhichweareusinguptotoday’’(James2009: 115–16). James stated clearly, ‘‘I know no figure in history of whom you can say hadwithinafewyearsofhisdeathsuchtremendousinfluenceonsuchwidely separated spheresof humanity’’ (2009: 115).These spheresincluded French andEuropeanliterature,educationandchilddevelopment,thegenreofauto- biographicalconfessionalwriting,thedeviceofthesocialcontract,aswellas the prose style in which much twentieth-century thought was penned. We couldalso mentionRousseau’s significancein musicalcomposition andthe- ory, in the study of language, and in what later became the fields of botany andevolutionaryscience.ButJamesparticularlyemphasizedtwodimensions 1 .................18664$ INTR 11-21-1408:40:01 PS PAGE1 2 JaneAnnaGordonandNeilRoberts of Rousseau’s fruitful legacy: first, his impact on the greatest works of ImmanuelKant(which rejectedthebasesofpoliticalauthorityinmonarchy, aristocracy,thechurchandthepope,andinsteadlocatedtheminethicsbased inthehumancapacitytoactinresponsetorealizationsofduty)3;second, on the revolutionary action at the core of the French Revolution. The efforts of Parisianmassestodestroyfeudalsociety,arguedJames,wereanaffirmation of Rousseau’s doctrine that it was the masses who were legitimately sovereign. Also as significant, James suggested, were the substantive affinities betweenRousseau’spoliticalthoughtandsomebrandsofCaribbeanpolitics. He recalled the ‘‘bursts of jeering laughter’’ of students in Trinidad when he explainedRousseau’swarningsthattherepresentativesinrepresentativegov- ernments easily moved away from the responsibilities with which they were chargedtothepursuitofonlytheirownnarrowinterests,nowwiththepow- ers of state in their grasp (James 2009: 111). Such laughter revealed, joked James,‘‘thatallofthemwerefollowersofRousseau’’(Ibid.).Jamesalsosin- gled out Rousseau’s idea of the general will, arguing that he saw it at work in Trinidad in two particularly poignant moments: in the leadership of Cap- tain Arthur Andrew Cipriani between 1920 and 1932, and of Doctor Eric E. Williams between 1957 and 1960. In both instances, these men were not thinkingonlyofwagesoreducationbutof‘‘liftingtheentirepopulationtoa higher stage’’ (James 2009: 112). On these rare occasions, James reflected, the minority, by which he meant the elite, wealthy, colonial minority, ‘‘bec[ame] very quiet [and did] not carry on in the way that they ordinarily [did]’’ (Ibid.). Finally, in passing, James mentioned that Rousseau ‘‘re- mind[edhim]verymuchofFrantzFanon’’(James2009:110).4 ThisvolumeexploresandilluminatesthestrongresonanceofRousseauin Caribbean thought and politics. It does so through advancing a creolizing method of reading that couples figures who are not typically engaged together.Throughthem,webringinterrelated,contradictoryfacesofmoder- nity closer, creating conversations among worlds entangled by colonizing projects. Creolizing Rousseau, in this sense, is intended to inaugurate the Creolizing the Canon series through arguing, in a manner that extends beyondtheparticularfigureofRousseau,thattoproperlyengageRousseau’s legacies demands grappling as much with the genealogies that grew out of his work in the Francophone colonies as those that thrive in contemporary WesternEuropeandtheUnitedStates. As explored at greater length in chapter 1, the idea of ‘‘creolizing’’ has been used in a variety of contexts in quite divergent ways. In this particular volume, ‘‘creolizing’’ refers to an interpretative move that our contributors are placing on Rousseau via the perspectives developed by C. L. R. James, FrantzFanonandothers.Weoffernoncanonicalinterpretationsofacanonical .................18664$ INTR 11-21-1408:40:01 PS PAGE2 Introduction:TheProjectofCreolizingRousseau 3 figure; we bring new methods to bear on the study of classic Rousseauian concepts and on the study of freedom, sovereignty, and citizenship as con- cepts that have their own fraught histories—which thinkers in Africa, the Caribbean and indigenous South America can uniquely illuminate. These thinkers’ creolization of Rousseau indicate the eighteenth-century writer’s receptionand transformationin various contexts,and foreground theagency of readers not just in Western Europe and the United States but wherever he was critically engaged and made local. One of many implications is that Rousseau specialists can no longer defensibly ignore his reception in the Global South. This is different from another approach to creolizing, largely absent in this text but the focus of subsequent volumes in this series, which illuminatesdimensionsofathinkerdisavowed,obscured,orrepressedinthe process of his or her canonization. Examples of this form of creolization includeSusanBuck-Morss’sHegel,Haiti,andUniversalHistory,AdlaiMur- doch’s Creolizing the Metropole and Wendy Belcher’s Abyssinia’s Samuel Johnson.5 Still, we would like to emphasize that creolizing Rousseau on the first model does not only mean placing him in dialogue with thinkers, tradi- tionsandtextsfromoutsideofthetraditionalWesternEuropeancanon;italso means using each constructively to illuminate the other in ways that funda- mentally transform both of the interlocutors and our understanding of them. The result is thus not merely a ‘‘compare and contrast’’ exercise of placing Rousseau ‘‘inconversation’’ withFrantz Fanon or C.L. R.James, butrather amorerobusttheoreticalme´tissagethatyieldsnewmodesofthoughtthat,at their best, are more than the sum of their parts. Put more boldly, the aim is toquestiontheverywayinwhichourtheorizingispracticed. As with the Bible, there are many Rousseaus. While not all readings can be considered equally rigorous or defensible, any one portrait reveals as muchaboutthecommitmentsandaspirationsofthegiveninterpreterasabout thelifeorideasofthemanhimself.Thereare,forexample,multipledimen- sionstothesinglesnapshotofferedbyJames:Rousseauascaricaturedsothat the disruptive stirrings his insights might generate are diffused in advance; Rousseauasanimmenseandcomplexshadowwithinwhichmuchofthesub- sequenthistoryofpoliticalthoughtisambivalentlyauthored;Rousseauasthe manwhopennedphrasesandparadoxesthatgalvanizedarangeoftransform- ative political actions that he may well not have himself undertaken; Rous- seau’s general will as an idea that, if rarely implemented, is evidenced in periodsinwhichthereisaneffortofthewholepolitytoconsiderthepolityas awhole,anaspirationatthecoreofeffortstobringintobeinganindependent Caribbean.Eachinvitesitsowntrajectoryofcriticalengagement. Of all of political theory’s canonical figures, Rousseau is the most deservedlyknownasmodernity’sradicalcritic,asthethinkerwhointroduced whatitwastoundertakeadialecticaltreatmentoftheprojectofmodernlife. .................18664$ INTR 11-21-1408:40:02 PS PAGE3
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