Creolizing Foundings: World-Making Beyond Pure Origins

Abstract

This article engages with a creolized approach to the problem and paradoxes of founding. At the heart of the paradox is the issue of political legitimacy: where do a people get the legitimacy to found or refound a new political order? I argue that Gordon’s creolized reading of Rousseau’s problem of the general will—via Fanon—offers us a novel approach to this question: one that neither resorts to an outside lawgiver or projects the solution for a people to solve in the future. Bringing together this solution with my own political reading of the problem of foundings, I contend that Gordon’s creolized general will offers not only a “third way” beyond traditional Rousseauian and Habermasian solutions to the problem, but also a solution that is importantly informed by and can continue to inform real world processes of founding and refounding in colonial and post-colonial contexts.