Empire (77 page)

22. See Roberto Zapperi’s Introduction, ibid., pp. 7–117.

23. Well over one hundred years later Antonio Gramsci’s notion ofthe

national-popular was conceived as part of an effort to recuperate precisely this hegemonic class operation in the service ofthe proletariat. For

Gramsci, national-popular is the rubric under which intellectuals would

be united with the people, and thus it is a powerful resource for the

construction ofa popular hegemony. See Antonio Gramsci,
Quaderni del

carcere
(Turin: Einaudi, 1977), 3:2113–20. For an excellent critique of Gramsci’s notion ofthe national-popular, see Alberto Asor Rosa,
Scrittori
e popolo,
7th ed. (Rome: Savelli, 1976).

24. Johann Gottlieb Fichte,
Addresses to the German Nation,
trans. R. F. Jones and G. H. Turnbull (Westport Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979).

25. We should note that the various liberal interpretations ofHegel, from

RudolfHaym to Franz Rosenzweig, only succeeded in recuperating his

political thought by focusing on its national aspects. See Rudolf Haym,

Hegel und sein Zeit
(Berlin, 1857); Franz Rosenzweig,
Hegel und der Staat
(Munich, 1920); and Eric Weil,
Hegel et l’E

´ tat
(Paris: Vrin, 1950). Rosen-

zweig is the one who best understands the tragedy ofthe unavoidable

connection between the nation and ethicality in Hegel’s thought. See

Franz Rosenzweig,
The Star of Redemption,
trans. Willaim Hallo (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971); and the excellent interpretation ofit, Ste´phane Moses,
Système et re´veĺation: la philosophie de Franz
Rosenzweig
(Paris: Seuil, 1982).

26. ‘‘[Socialists] must therefore unequivocally demand that the Social-

Democrats ofthe
oppressing
countries (ofthe so-called ‘‘great’’ nations in particular) should recognize and defend the right of the
oppressed
nations to self-determination in the political sense of the word, i.e., the right to political separation.’’ Lenin,
The Right of Nations to Self-Determination,
p. 65.

27. See Malcolm X, ‘‘The Ballot or the Bullet,’’ in
Malcolm X Speaks
(New York: Pathfinder, 1989), pp. 23–44. For a discussion ofMalcolm X’s

nationalism, particularly in his efforts to found the Organization of Afro-

American Unity during the last year ofhis life, see William Sales, Jr.,

From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of
Afro-American Unity
(Boston: South End Press, 1994).

28. Wahneema Lubiano, ‘‘Black Nationalism and Black Common Sense:

Policing Ourselves and Others,’’ in Wahneema Lubiano, ed.,
The House

That Race Built
(New York: Vintage, 1997), pp. 232–252; quotation

p. 236. See also Wahneema Lubiano, ‘‘Standing in for the State: Black

N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 0 8 – 1 1 3

435

Nationalism and ‘Writing’ the Black Subject,’’
Alphabet City,
no. 3 (October 1993), pp. 20–23.

29. The question of‘‘black sovereignty’’ is precisely the issue at stake in Cedric Robinson’s critique ofW. E. B. Du Bois’s support for Liberia in

the 1920s and 1930s. Robinson believes that Du Bois had uncritically

supported the forces of modern sovereignty. See Cedric Robinson,

‘‘W. E. B. Du Bois and Black Sovereignty,’’ in Sidney Lemelle and Robin

Kelley, eds.,
Imagining Home: Culture, Class, and Nationalism in the African
Diaspora
(London: Verso, 1994), pp. 145–157.

30. Jean Genet, ‘‘Interview avec Wischenbart,’’ in
Oeuvres complètes,
vol. 6

(Paris: Gallimard, 1991), p. 282. In general, on Genet’s experience with

the Black Panthers and the Palestinians, see his final novel,
Prisoner of Love,
trans. Barbara Bray (Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan University Press, 1992).

31. Benedict Anderson maintains that philosophers have unjustly disdained

the concept ofnation and that we should view it in a more neutral light.

‘‘Part ofthe difficulty is that one tends unconsciously to hypostatize the

existence ofNationalism-with-a-big-N (rather as one might Age-with-

a-capital-A) and then classify ‘it’ as
an
ideology. (Note that ifeveryone has an age, Age is merely an analytical expression.) It would, I think,

make things easier ifone treated it as ifit belonged with ‘kinship’ and

‘religion,’ rather than with ‘liberalism’ or ‘fascism.’ ’ Anderson,
Imagined
Communities,
p. 5. Everyone belongs to a nation, as everyone belongs to (or has) an age, a race, a gender, and so forth. The danger here is that

Anderson
naturalizes
the nation and our belonging to it. We must on the contrary denaturalize the nation and recognize its historical construction

and political effects.

32. On the relationship between class struggle and the two World Wars, see

Ernst Nolte,
Der Europaïsche Bu¨rgerkrieg, 1917–1945
(Frankfurt: Propy-laën Verlag, 1987).

33. The primary text to be conidered in the context ofAustrian social-

democratic theorists is Otto Bauer,
Die Nationalita¨tenfrage und die Sozialde-mokratie
(Vienna: Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1924). English translations ofexerpts from this book are included in
Austro-Marxism,
trans. Tom Bottomore and Patrick Goode (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978).

34. See Joseph Stalin, ‘‘Marxism and the National Question,’’ in
Marxism and
the National and Colonial Question
(New York: International Publishers, 1935), pp. 3–61.

35. We adopt this term from, but do not follow in the political perspective of, J. L. Talmon,
The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy
(London: Secker and Warburg, 1952).

436

N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 1 3 – 1 2 2

36. Cited in Roberto Zapperi’s Introduction to Sieyès,
Qu’est-ce que le Tiers
E

´ tat,
pp. 7–117; quotation p. 77.

2 . 3 T H E D I A L E C T I C S O F C O L O N I A L S O V E R E I G N T Y

1. ‘‘The darker side ofthe Renaissance underlines . . . the rebirth ofthe

classical tradition as a justification ofcolonial expansion.’’ Walter Mignolo,
The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization
(Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press, 1995), p. vi.

2. Bartolome´ de Las Casas,
In Defense of the Indians,
ed. Stafford Poole (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974), p. 271. See also Lewis

Hanke,
All Mankind Is One: A Study of the Disputation between Bartolome´

de Las Casas and Juan Gines de Sepulveda in 1550 on the Intellectual and
Religious Capacity of the American Indians
(De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974).

3. Quoted in C. L. R. James,
The Black Jacobins,
2nd ed. (New York: Random House, 1963), p. 196.

4. AimeĆeśaire,
Toussaint Louverture: la re´volution franc¸aise et le problème colonial
(Paris: Preśence Africaine, 1961), p. 309.

5. See Eugene Genovese,
From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave
Revolts in the Making of the Modern World
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), p. 88.

6. Karl Marx,
Capital,
trans. Ben Fowkes (New York: Vintage, 1976), 1:925.

7. Karl Marx, ‘‘The British Rule in India,’’ in
Surveys from Exile,
vol. 2 of
Political Writings
(London: Penguin, 1973), p. 306.

8. Karl Marx, ‘‘The Native States,’’ in
Letters on India
(Lahore: Contemporary India Publication, 1937), p. 51.

9. Marx, ‘‘The British Rule in India,’’ p. 307.

10. Karl Marx, ‘‘The Future Results ofBritish Rule in India’’ in
Surveys from
Exile,
vol. 2 of
Political Writings
(London: Penguin, 1973), p. 320.

11. Aijaz Ahmad points out that Marx’s description ofIndian history seems

to be taken directly from Hegel. See Aijaz Ahmad,
In Theory: Classes,

Nations, Literatures
(London: Verso, 1992), pp. 231 and 241.

12. Marx, ‘‘The Future Results ofBritish Rule in India,’’ p. 320.

13. Robin Blackburn,
The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848
(London: Verso, 1988), pp. 3 and 11.

14. See Elizabeth Fox Genovese and Eugene Genovese,
Fruits of Merchant

Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. vii.

15. Blackburn,
The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery,
p. 8.

16. The relationship between wage labor and slavery in capitalist development is one ofthe central problematics elaborated in Yann Moulier Boutang,

N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 2 3 – 1 3 1

437

De l’esclavage au salariat: ećonomie historique du salariat bride´
(Paris: Presses universitaries de France, 1998).

17. This is one ofthe central arguments ofRobin Blackburn’s
Overthrow of
Colonial Slavery.
See, in particular, p. 520.

18. Moulier Boutang,
De l’esclavage au salariat,
p. 5.

19. Franz Fanon,
The Wretched of the Earth,
trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press, 1963), p. 38. On the Manichaean divisions ofthe

colonial world, see Abdul JanMohamed, ‘‘The Economy ofManichean

Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature,’’

Critical Inquiry,
12, no. 1 (Autumn 1985), 57–87.

20. Fanon,
The Wretched of the Earth,
p. 42.

21. Edward Said,
Orientalism
(New York: Vintage, 1978), pp. 4–5 and 104.

22. Cultural anthropology has conducted a radical self-criticism in the past few decades, highlighting how many ofthe strongest early veins ofthe

discipline participated in and supported colonialist projects. The early

classic texts ofthis critique are Geŕard Leclerc,
Anthropologie et colonialisme:
essai sur l’histoire de l’africanisme
(Paris: Fayard, 1972); and Talal Asad, ed.,
Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter
(London: Ithaca Press, 1973).

Among the numerous more recent works, we found particularly useful

Nicholaus Thomas,
Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel, and Gov-

ernment
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

23. This argument is developed clearly in Valentin Mudimbe,
The Invention
of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), see esp. pp. 64, 81, and 108.

24. Ranajit Guha,
An Indian Historiography of India: A Nineteenth-Century
Agenda and Its Implications
(Calcutta: Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, 1988), p. 12.

25.
An Inquiry into the causes of the insurrection of negroes in the island of St.

Domingo
London and Philadelphia: Crukshank, 1792), p. 5.

26. See Paul Gilroy,
The Black Atlantic
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 1–40.

27. See Franz Fanon,
Black Skin, White Masks,
trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967), pp. 216–222.

28. Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘‘Black Orpheus,’’ in
‘‘What Is Literature?’’ and Other
Essays
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 296.

29. Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘‘Preface,’’ in Fanon,
The Wretched of the Earth,
p. 20.

30. ‘‘In fact, negritude appears like the upbeat [
le temps faible
] ofa dialectical progression: the theoretical and practical affirmation of white supremacy

is the thesis; the position ofnegritude as an antithetical value is the

moment of negativity. But this negative moment is not sufficient in itself, 438

N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 3 1 – 1 4 0

and these black men who use it know this perfectly well; they know that

it aims at preparing the synthesis or realization ofthe human being in a

raceless society. Thus, negritude is
for
destroying itself; it is a ‘‘crossing to’’ and not an ‘‘arrival at,’’ a means and not an end.’’ Sartre, ‘‘Black

Orpheus,’’ p. 327.

31. Fanon,
The Wretched of the Earth,
p. 52.

32. Ibid., pp. 58–65.

33. See Malcolm X, ‘‘The Ballot or the Bullet,’’ in
Malcolm X Speaks
(New York: Pathfinder, 1989), pp. 23–44.

34. We should remember that within the sphere ofcommunist and socialist

movements, the discourse ofnationalism not only legitimated the struggle

for liberation from colonial powers but also served as a means of insisting on the autonomy and differences of local revolutionary experiences from

the models ofdominant socialist powers. For example, Chinese national-

ism was the banner under which Chinese revolutionaries could resist

Soviet control and Soviet models, translating Marxism into the language

ofthe Chinese peasantry (that is, into Mao Zedong thought). Similarly,

in the subsequent period, revolutionaries from Vietnam to Cuba and

Nicaragua insisted on the national nature ofstruggles in order to assert

their autonomy from Moscow and Beijing.

35. Charter ofthe United Nations, Article 2.1, in Leland Goodrich and

Edvard Hambro,
Charter of the United Nations
(Boston: World Peace

Foundation, 1946), p. 339.

36. Partha Chatterjee,
Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative
Discourse?
(London: Zed Books, 1986), p. 168.

C O N T A G I O N

1. Louis-Ferdinand Ceĺine,
Journey to the End of the Night,
trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: New Directions, 1983), p. 145 (translation modified); subsequently cited in text.