Paige Arthur's book chronicles the trajectory of Sartre's thinking with respect to the wave of an... more Paige Arthur's book chronicles the trajectory of Sartre's thinking with respect to the wave of anti-colonialist movements that swept the world in the wake of World War II, in both the colonies and the metropoles. While she wishes to assess the role of the intellectual in this process, and the historical meaning of intellectual opposition to colonialism, she instead succeeds only in writing a history of Sartre, or rather, of one dimension of Sartre's thought. Sartre engaged himself in opposition to French colonialism in Vietnam and Algeria well in advance of most others in France. He also championed the cause of African independence in general. And he wrote extensively about the role of the intellectual in society. Arthur's book documents this eloquently and in detail. But she wishes to go further than that, and understand Sartre's meaning for history, as an engaged person in it, in light of the philosophical concepts he himself developed at the time. Unfortunately, she is not a sufficiently good reader of Sartre to accomplish that conjunction. She ends up with a chronicle of Sartre's texts and a strange and somewhat misplaced project of her own. In form, the book establishes a selected set of political moments in Sartre's life, grounded in specific writings, in terms of which she situates Sartre's analysis of racism and colonialism. Three texts in particular are canonical for her: Anti-Semite and Jew (ASJ), Black Orpheus, and Sartre's analysis of racism in the Critique of Dialectical Reason (CDR). Other texts are discussed against these three, in order to position them within Sartre's development of an anti-colonialist politics from the 1940s to the mid-1970s, and to integrate that with his philosophical thinking. But the richness of Sartre's philosophy seems to slip from her grasp. For instance, she oddly substitutes the term "decolonization" for the anti-colonialism of his time. The difference is that anti-colonialism refers to the antagonism between the colonized seeking independence and the colonialism that refuses it, whereas decolonization refers to the subsequent struggle that the formerly colonized must wage within themselves -to overcome the internalized effects, both individual and social, of the colonial relation. Where death and defeat would accompany failure in the first, cooptation and debt would principally
Paige Arthur . Unfinished Projects: Decolonization and the Philosophy of Jean‐Paul Sartre . New York: Verso. 2010. Pp. xxix, 233. $24.95
The American Historical Review, 2011
Spectors of Sartre: Nancy's Romance with Ontological Freedom
Postmodern Culture, 1995
The Dual-State Character of U.S. Coloniality: Notes Toward Decolonization
Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, Jun 22, 2007
Jack Johnson Fanon is known as a theoretician of anti-colonialist struggle, and especially of the... more Jack Johnson Fanon is known as a theoretician of anti-colonialist struggle, and especially of the decolonization of the mind of the colonized. During the era of national liberation movements in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, his thinking, especially in The Wretched of the Earth (WE), spread widely through the third world, as well as communities in the U.S. (Black, Chicano, Native American, Puerto Rican, Asian, and others), many of whom saw themselves as "subcolonies" (in George Jackson's phrase) in solidarity with those movements. (1) It also spread within the Vietnam anti-war movement which sensed U.S. presence in Vietnam to be a colonialist project and sought to grasp what that meant for a nation that advertised itself as anti-colonialist. The era of national liberation ended roughly at the end of the 1980s with the defeat of the Salvadorean revolution and the collapse of the U.S.S.R. A different form of EuroAmerican control had taken hold to which the prior anti-colonialist strategies were no longer adequate. Against the systematics of globalized neo-liberalism, opposition required a different form of social movement, with a different ethos, if it were to continue its project of liberation. In this current era, Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks (BSWM) has come into greater currency. (2) And this suggests the need for a redescription of coloniality, especially with respect to the U.S. To initiate such a redescription, let us turn to the story of Jack Johnson, a black prizefighter at the turn of the 20th century, about whom PBS produced a documentary a few years ago. (3) Johnson was a quick and powerful man, an indefatiguable boxer who emerged from the illicit fight circles of Texas in the 1890s. He remained undefeated in all but one bout. Yet, as he rose in prominence defeating all opponents, black and white, he hit a wall when it came to the heavyweight title. His challenges were consistently declined by the current titleholders. In turn, John L. Sullivan, Jim Corbett, and Jim Jeffries refused him, saying that they would never let the title be taken by a black man. That fear, and the forethought and premonition that it contained, revealed a certain fragility of white identity and white hegemony. Yet they were saved from the need to recognize that fragility by a vast outpouring of support for each titleholder's refusal. The white press, white politicians, devotees of the sport and much of white society all vindicated each champ's refusal. The typical racist inversions were deployed. Johnson was called lazy or a coward as a reason not to fight him. In the film, however, an image of veritable obsession with whiteness emerges in the social response to Johnson. Even that "man of the people," Jack London, chimed in on the side of white sanctity. Yet Johnson met it all with equanimity and wit. He had an endless intuition of how to out-maneuver the white obsessions with segregation and the denigration of black people. Beyond his talent in the ring, he showed an independence of personal comportment, and a sense of self-respect, that constituted a beacon of dignity and personhood for black communities all over the U.S. His words bit into the fabric of the society that sought to exclude him, as he metaphorically kicked down its little white picket fences. He followed the heavyweight champions around the country, and even to Europe, repeating his challenges and publicizing their refusals. When Tommy Burns (the titleholder in 1909) was finally shamed into fighting him, Johnson won both the fight and the title handily. At that moment, the attacks on him escalated to a level of social panic. He was disparaged in the press for every aspect of his life except his fighting ability--his money, his women (many of whom were white), his life style. Editorials called upon him overtly to return to his place in the racist hierarchy. Hostility toward black people in general increased, and warnings appeared in newspaper editorials and political pronouncements that black people should not think differently of themselves because of Johnson's success. …
The whiteness of the assault on Iraq
Socialism and Democracy, Jun 1, 2003
From the beginning, the movement that tried to stop the assault on Iraq knew it was a racist war,... more From the beginning, the movement that tried to stop the assault on Iraq knew it was a racist war, just on the face of it. A white imperialism was Eurocentrically attacking a derogated people of color through the usual criminalizing generalizations: all Iraqis were attacked in the name of Saddam Hussein, all Arabs were attacked in the name of Iraq (and ultimately, all Islam was attacked through the denigration of Arabs). That a people of color was targeted through some warp in the structure of justice recalled for many the inner dynamic of the prison-industrial complex, racial profiling, illegal mass detentions, racialized cutbacks in social services, etc. When Bush beat his war drum to whip up an international posse, it was as if to invoke that familiar line from the movies: "Come on, boys, get that rope; we know he did it." And right on cue, though almost as an afterthought to the mob mentality, there was the claim to purity, the sanctified goal of "bringing democracy and freedom" to Iraq. But the Manifest Destiny to which this referred had never been a liberating mission toward real people; instead, across the American continent, it had involved implanting white Anglo-Saxon governance through settlement by white people where former societies were either cleared from the land or segregated upon it in the name of white republican principles. In Iraq, these "republican principles" will take the form of multinational corporate contracts.
Introduction to Part IV
Radical philosophy today, 2001
Imagined Communities
Radical philosophy review of books, 1994
The Structure of Whiteness, Its History and Politics
Radical philosophy today, 2000
Social Justice Movements as Border Thinking: An Anzaldúan Meditation
Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, Jun 22, 2006
In their book on Poor People's Movements, Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward theorize a st... more In their book on Poor People's Movements, Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward theorize a strategic difference in social justice movements that for them determines the successes and failures (never wholly separable) of such movements. (1) The dichotomy they develop is between organizing mass mobilizations and building permanent organizations. They look at the histories of civil rights, industrial unions, and the welfare rights movement of the mid-60s to 70s (in which they were personally involved), and they suggest that, in each case, the potential mass power of the movement was derailed or dissipated by focusing on organizational forms whose purpose was ironically to give that power permanence (PPM,307). For instance, when the welfare rights movement won concessions from state and federal governments in terms of benefits for economically displaced persons and changes in how welfare was dispensed (which often involved the humiliation of the recipient), it was through mass mobilizations at the welfare centers (PPM,275ff). It was these mass mobilizations that produced a social recognition that recipients were real people living in real oppressive conditions, while providing them with avenues for social and political participation in their lives. When the movement leadership decided to consolidate this militancy in the form of political organizations that could influence political parties and negotiate from strength with legislators, its abandonment of mass mobilizations eroded the participation that was needed to provide cohesion and strength for just such organization. For Piven and Cloward, the difference in focus between mobilization and organization marked the axis along which a movement succeeded or failed (PPM, 278). This paradox, wherein a movement can put an end to itself by the very means with which it seeks to guarantee its survival, has been noticed by others. In his book, Doing Democracy, Bill Moyer attempts to give it a positive spin. (2) He provides a map of movement stages by which activists and organizers can judge where they are in the movement-building process, so that set-backs and erosions can be seen as natural phases and transcended. For him, as for Piven and Cloward, a movement's purpose is to influence political structures, and win concessions from the institutions they confront. In Moyer's schema, movements begin outside institutions in order to eventually "use institutional channels to bring about change" (DD,112). Where he differs from Piven and Cloward is in focusing on the consciousness of activist organizers as central to building a movement, while the latter see social conditions as determining the involvement of poor or dispossessed people. (3) For both, however, the movement is an instrumentality, something to be molded by activists or leaders for the purpose of correcting the abrogations of social institutions in the interests of the material needs of people. They do not ask what it really means that a social justice movement exists. Their concern is with the dynamics of how a movement counterposes itself to institutionality and wins influence. This implies assuming that society is democratic, and that the political expression of people's needs will have a place at the table, even if people have to fight their way in. Yet something lurks in the background that disturbs this assumption. In describing the birth of movements, Piven and Cloward say, "Masses of people become defiant; they violate the traditions and laws to which they ordinarily acquiesce, and they flaunt the authorities to whom they ordinarily defer" (PPM,4). It is a collective defiance, by which people wrench themselves free from tradition, and transform their entire being, their very sense of themselves, both emotionally and rationally (my thanks to Mohammad Tamdgidi for emphasizing this in his presentations and communications). In other words, more is at stake than can be subsumed by demands for benefits or recognitions. …
Seeing the Unseen in Whiteness
Socialism and Democracy, Nov 1, 2013
larly on her mother? Were her mother’s efforts to erase Rousso’s limp an attempt to undo the erro... more larly on her mother? Were her mother’s efforts to erase Rousso’s limp an attempt to undo the error? What role, if any, did guilt play? I would like to know how she is able – if she is able – to obtain consistent, competent and sensitive medical care, especially as she ages. This is an ongoing challenge within my own family, and I am sure I am not alone in desiring to hear from others about how they have gone about dealing with bias from health care providers, for they are not immune from bias, as Rousso demonstrated in her story of the psychotherapy institute. I am left hungry for more details, more opinions, and also more paintings, from this gifted, articulate woman. Her memoir, informative and well-crafted as it is, leaves us with an impression that it is still very complicated for a person with visible disabilities to maintain personal privacy and dignity, yet also freely to enter the world and freely express what she perceives. I came away from this book believing that Rousso has much more to say, and I hope she will continue to speak.
This collection of essays on corporations, globalization and the state takes a radical look at th... more This collection of essays on corporations, globalization and the state takes a radical look at the role of the state in globalization and its transformation thereby. It addresses such key questions as: What role is the state (in both the North and South) playing in its own rollback and demise? How has the emergence of global production chains facilitated the emergence of a transnational capitalist class? Do states still serve the interests of the people they govern, or do they now primarily serve the interests of global transnational capital? How can the struggle for democracy be realized in a globalized state? The contributors seek, in the context of the worldwide Occupy Wall Street movement, to analyse why and how democracy might be achieved in globalized states. The editors and contributors are long-time social activists approaching the issues from the perspective of the global South. This collection is unique in that it includes work from and about Cuba in relation to the impact...
Introduction to Part I
Radical Philosophy Today, 2001
The Structure of Whiteness, Its History and Politics
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