Empire of Liberty: Power, Desire, and Freedom PDF
Preview Empire of Liberty: Power, Desire, and Freedom
Empire of Liberty RE-MAPPING THE TRANSNATIONAL A Dartmouth Series in American Studies series editor Donald E. Pease Avalon Foundation Chair of Humanities Founding Director of the Futures of American Studies Institute Dartmouth College The emergence of Transnational American Studies in the wake of the Cold War marks the most signifi cant reconfi guration of American Studies since its incep- tion. The shock waves generated by a newly globalized world order demanded an understanding of America’s embeddedness within global and local processes rather than scholarly reaffi rmations of its splendid isolation. The series Re- Mapping the Transnational seeks to foster the cross-national dialogues needed to sustain the vitality of this emergent fi eld. To advance a truly comparativist understanding of this scholarly endeavor, Dartmouth College Press welcomes monographs from scholars both inside and outside the United States. For a complete list of books available in this series, see www.upne.com. Anthony Bogues, Empire of Liberty: Power, Desire, and Freedom Bernd Herzogenrath, An American Body|Politic: A Deleuzian Approach Johannes Voelz, Transcendental Resistance: The New Americanists and Emerson’s Challenge anthony bogues Empire of Liberty Power, Desire, and Freedom dartmouth college press hanover, new hampshire Published by University Press of New England Hanover and London Dartmouth College Press Published by University Press of New England One Court Street, Lebanon NH 03766 www.upne.com © 2010 Trustees of Dartmouth College All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed by Katherine B. Kimball Typeset in Sabon by Integrated Publishing Solutions University Press of New England is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper. For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bogues, Anthony. Empire of liberty : power, desire, and freedom / Anthony Bogues. p. cm.—(Re-mapping the transnational) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-1-58465-930-3 (cloth : alk. paper)—isbn 978-1-58465-931-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Liberty. 2. United States—Foreign relations—Philosophy. 3. United States— Foreign relations—Moral and ethical aspects. 4. Imperialism—Moral and ethical aspects. 5. Imperialism—Social aspects. I. Title. jc585.b578 2010 327.73001—dc22 2010021296 5 4 3 2 1 To my grandmother Imogene for all that she has taught me and for my granddaughter Malia with hopes for a more humane world. contents Acknowledgments ix introduction 1 1 empire of liberty Desire, Power, and the States of Exception 9 2 race, historical trauma, and democracy The Politics of a Historical Wrong 38 3 death, power, violence, and new sovereignties 66 4 the end of history or the invention of existence Critical Thought and Thinking about the Human 98 Notes 123 Bibliography 141 Index 149 acknowledgments both this book of essays and a platform to think and refl ect aloud would not have been possible without the enormous generosity of Donald Pease. For a number of years we have been in dialogue about America. We have not agreed all the time, but Don’s extra- ordinary insights always stimulate me to think again, even when I return to my original positions. Additionally, Don’s broad and deep generosity, securely anchored in a rich conception of the life of the mind, has been a model in an academy driven by the marketization and banal professionalization of scholarship. Thank you, Don. Many ideas in these essays gestated in conversations with colleagues in the boundary 2 collective, particularly Ronald Judy, Paul Bové, Joe Buttigieg, and Hortense Spillers. Each of these colleagues has argued, agreed, or made objections known in different forums. For this I want to thank them. The other members of the boundary 2 collective have been an important intellectual source of criticism and support as I have stumbled through my efforts to understand America. The undergraduate students in my senior seminar class “Race, Empire, and Modernity,” in the Africana Studies Depart- ment at Brown University, have quizzed, pushed back, and opened new lines of inquiry. I thank all the students who have taken this seminar. Brown University is a special place for undergraduate edu- cation, and the participation of these students in the seminar added immensely to the lectures and subsequent essays. When the lectures were revised, I had a series of conversations with the novelist John Edgar Wideman, who teaches at Brown. Those conversations found
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