Imperial Democracy Research Articles

“The past does not lie behind us”: Warrior-matriarchs’ retrotopia in Witi Ihimaera’s fiction

Contrary to an apolitical, pessimistic, and non-feminist perception of Witi Ihimaera’s work, this article contends that his early novel The Matriarch (1986) and its sequel The Dream Swimmer (1997) frame Māori communities as an ancient, patriarchal space in need of revision to accommodate women. Reconsidering the role of tribalism and Māori utopian and cyclical land narratives, this study argues that the confessional male narrator of both novels, Tamatea Mahana, learns to embrace a matrilineal genealogy not only of powerful Māori women leaders of chiefly status, but also of charismatic women in the shadow, like his mother Tiana. Beyond Pākehā imperial democracy and Māori “male utopias of domination”, Tamatea and the exceptional gallery of warrior-matriarchs implement a peculiar and controversial retrotopia — a return to the prematurely buried grand ideas of the past — which, even when dangerously resonating with nostalgia, aims at an open-ended model of democracy through spiral temporality. 1 A predominantly decolonizing theory and methodology is used, drawing on Kaupapa Māori and Mana Wāhine theories.

Vast Personal Forces: Thucydides, Populism, and the Liberty of the Ancients

AbstractModern discussions of freedom focus on negative liberty or nondomination. In his portrait of the Athenian democracy, Thucydides thematizes the psychology of ancient freedom. By focusing on the psychology of the demos, Thucydides shows how democratic imperialism unfolds from the experience of freedom as a kind of felt power. His analysis offers us a way to think about contemporary populism. In representative democracy, the connection between power and freedom has been severed by representation and the modern state, but an experience of power nonetheless remains part of what we mean by freedom today. Modern citizens frequently feel powerless and so unfree, ensnared by impersonal forces. One lure of populism is that it satisfies the longing for freedom as a form of felt power, for a measure of control over one's life.

Agassi and Popper on Nationalism – and Beyond

Popper and Agassi diverged on nationalism. Popper was a trenchant critic whereas Agassi formed a theory of liberal nationalism. At the root of their disagreement was Popper’s refusal of Jewish identity and rejection of Zionism, in contrast with Agassi’s affirmation of progressive Jewishness and liberal Zionism. Both Agassi and Popper, however, rejected ethnonationalism. To hedge against it, they ignored the claims of ethnocultural communities. This essay will highlight Agassi’s liberal theory of the nation state but urge that we overcome Critical Rationalists’ instinctive aversion to ethnicity, and accommodate ethnocultural communities. We should also explore again both Popper’s democratic imperialism and cosmopolitan diasporas, to think a future beyond nationalism.

Świat ideowy amerykańskiego neokonserwatyzmu

The present article presents a complex and ideological-twists-loaded history of American intellectuals environment, mainly of Jewish origin, with Jews having become over the past half century became one of the most influential groups among the power elite of United States. The starting point for most of them was the fascination with Trockist ideology, (however combined with anti-soviet attitude); with the target being point being, on the other hand – the views referred to as “neoconservatism”, which is in fact a combination of some elements of classical political liberalism, the criticism of the overgrowth of “welfare state” and new-leftist “counterculture”, anti-communism launched from demoliberal positions, and in the second generation of this group: not only anti-islamism but also “democratic imperialism”.

Empire, Popular Sovereignty, and the Problem of Self-and-Other-Determination

This article develops W. E. B. Du Bois’s notion of democratic despotism to illustrate the entanglement of popular sovereignty and empire through an excessive form of western self-determination and theorizes how features of this formation remain today. Democratic despotism implies that, in western democracies at the turn of the twentieth century, popular sovereignty was an impulse to partake of the wealth and resources obtained by empire. Western democracies issued a claim to determine themselves (democratically) and others (despotically), in what I call “self-and-other-determination.” I frame the question of imperial democracy within the literature on empire and racial capitalism and the writings of Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, and Saidiya Hartman to conceptualize how racial affective attachments allow citizens past and present to restrict democratic concern to a limited community, whose wealth relies on the imperial exploitation of racialized others. I discuss the absence of these questions in the literature on self-determination and reflect on the implications of my framework for the contemporary rise of right-wing populism.

Thucydides's Tragic Science of Democratic Defeat

AbstractThis article reinterprets Thucydides's analysis of the post-Periclean turn in Athenian politics by reading it within the context of contemporary “tragic” and “scientific” explanatory traditions. It finds in this analysis an ambitious attempt to reinvent the traditional, tragic pattern of hubris-driven reversal by reinterpreting its underlying causal logic according to a scientific perspective in which the overdetermining effects of deities are replaced by the variable power dynamics of democratic deliberation. The resultant analysis identifies a change in the relative standing of leaders as the determining cause of democratic reversal, not the absolute decline in leadership, thus tracing the Athenian turn towards hubris, great error, and civil discord to the egalitarian ordering of the post-Periclean assembly. In so doing, it shows how Thucydides's analysis posed a powerful challenge to previous attempts, both tragic and scientific, to prognosticate the fate of imperial democracy, as well as offering an exemplary moment of Thucydides's synthetic approach towards tragic and scientific explanatory perspectives.

Democratic imperialism and Risorgimento colonialism: European legionnaires on the Argentine Pampa in the 1850s

AbstractIn the wake of the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, democratic nationalism promoted the liberation of oppressed peoples from the shackles of absolutist empires and prophesied the emergence of a cosmopolitan brotherhood of nation states. From a global perspective, however, this political culture could be imperial. The governors of State of Buenos Aires modelled plans for the White colonization of the pampas on French Algeria. They sent a Military-Agricultural Legion to the enclave of Bahía Blanca, near the Patagonian frontier, to participate in the war against the Indians. Launched as the successor to Garibaldi’s Italian Legion of Montevideo, its leaders promised to bring civilization to savage lands in the spirit of Columbus and in the name of the Risorgimento. This case study offers a window into the cross-pollination of ideas concerning conquest and colonization between Latin America and Europe. Expansion and secession, empire and nation, mestizaje and racial hierarchies, cosmopolitanism and adventurism, all coexisted within an entangled republican universe.

Neokonserwatyzm amerykański: Jego geneza, rozwój i wpływ na politykę USA

The present article presents a complex and ideological-twists-loaded history of American intellectuals environment, mainly of Jewish origin, with Jews having become over the past half century became one of the most influential groups among the power elite of United States. The starting point for most of them was the fascination with Trockist ideology, (however combined with anti-soviet attitude); with the target being point being, on the other hand – the views referred to as “neoconservatism”, which is in fact a combination of some elements of classical political liberalism, the criticism of the overgrowth of “welfare state” and new-leftist “counterculture”, anti-communism launched from demoliberal positions, and in the second generation of this group: not only anti-islamism but also “democratic imperialism”.

A Militant Crusade In Africa: The Great Commission And Segregation

During the Cold War and in the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Calvinist and political fundamentalists of North America opposed the integration of American society and the extension of civil rights to African-Americans. Both were viewed as contrary to God's plan for humankind and omens for the end times. At the same time, these militant clerics spread reformed theology and eschatology to non-white societies across the globe. An important missionary field was Africa, where American and British racial mores influenced the cultural and political struggle. western, capitalistic and democratic principles, white minority-rule, and British imperialism faced African nationalism and communist aid to independence movements. Accordingly, the contrast between militant theology and liberal, modernist Protestantism was interjected into the conflict. Two American crusaders, Carl McIntire and Billy James Hargis, made Africa an important battleground to defend segregation and western influence. Both pursued individual ministries and had differing theological agendas towards race. The International Council of Christian Churches, an organization that McIntire led, spread God's word to black Africans, while Hargis' Christian Crusade Against Communism worked with Rhodesia's white minority government. Their efforts provide insight into the militant theological and political crusade in North America and how they projected their Calvinist ideals into the international arena and into Africa.

‘Little works of art’: photography, camera clubs and democratizing everyday life in early twentieth-century Japan

By the end of the Meiji period in 1912, members of Japan's new middle classes had taken up the pastime of photography, once a luxury affordable only to Japan's urban elite. The availability of cheaper, domestically produced cameras and developing materials fueled this popularization of photography. Along with affordable products, the rapid growth in popular camera clubs helped spread photographic know-how. Camera clubs were shared social spaces where members, primarily men, explored photographic art and technique. By spreading the idioms and practices of artistic expression among a wider audience, camera clubs, along with museums, galleries and exhibitions, were the primary institutional setting for the democratization of the fine arts in modern Japan. At the same time, clubs were voluntary associations and operated along democratic procedural principles that provided members the opportunity to participate in democratically run organizations where they could exercise individual rights not granted to most of them in the wider political system. This article argues that camera clubs must be understood as among the most important spaces for the expression of liberal democratic ideals in the cultural sphere during the period of imperial democracy from 1905 until 1932.

AUDACIOUS FEMINISMS

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. For a full accounting of the idea ‘new-old’ see Eisenstein 1998 Eisenstein, Zillah. 1998. Global obscenities: Patriarchy, capitalism and the lure of cyberfantasy, New York: New York University Press. [Google Scholar]. 2. Also see the rest of the New York Times Magazine 18 August 2009, in which the Landler article is found for many discussions of women's rights as the major cause of this time. 3. The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States; they were enacted between 1876 and 1965 and mandated racial segregation in all public facilities. 4. See especially chapters 1 and 2 of Sexual Decoys, Gender, Race and War in Imperial Democracy, for a full discussion of my use of the term ‘sexual decoy’ (Eisenstein 2007 Eisenstein, Zillah. 2007. Sexual decoys, gender, race and war in imperial democracy, London: Zed Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 5. Although this has been a central query for feminist theory for over two decades now, I particularly wish to address this issue in terms of its relevance for my viewing of sex and gender decoys. 6. This makes me think of bell hooks' Feminism is for Everybody (2000 Hooks, Bell. 2000. Feminism is for everybody, Cambridge, MA: South End Press. [Google Scholar]). 7. Title IX was a 1972 amendment to the US Civil Rights Act 1962, which extended it to prohibited sex-based discrimination in educational programs and activities receiving federal assistance. This paved the way for greater inclusion of women in college athletics programs.

Performing the Village Square in Interwar Japan: Toward a Hidden History of Public Space

Histories of public space generally assume a strong correlation between the health of a nation's civil society and the vibrancy of its public sites, in so much as the latter provide an observable venue for free assembly and popular protest. This essay, while not opposing such a view, offers a corrective to the kind of history it encourages, wherein public space appears politically relevant only at its most visible moments. Framing the analysis is Japanese provincial writer Miyazawa Kenji (1896–1933) and his “Poran no hiroba” (Poran's Square), which survives as a piece of school theater and an evolving prose narrative about a rural youth who reclaims for his agrarian community a site of shared assembly. By interrogating public space as an object of the literary and theatrical imagination, specifically in the context of interwar rural Japan, the author argues that its less visible aspects have much to tell us about its relation to civil society, both perceived and actual, in the waning years of “Imperial Democracy.”

LATIN AMERICA AND THE CHALLENGE TO IMPERIAL REASON

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Fanon (1967 Fanon, F. 1967. Black skin, white masks, London: Pluto Press. [Google Scholar], p. 188) for instance defined the ‘collective unconscious’ as the ‘sum of prejudices, myths, collective attitudes of a given group’. The term can be used in relation to all kinds of society, and in Western societies the history of Empire leaves in its wake a whole series of attitudes and values that act as a barrier to the working through of the varied meanings of the imperial experience so that new identities can be formed and fought for. Instead there is frequently a blockage preventing the processing of the imperial mentality and opposition to multiculturalism, or better expressed, interculturalism as well as new forms of racism result. For a stimulating analysis see Gilroy (2005 Gilroy, P. 2005. Postcolonial Melancholia, New York: Columbia University Press. [Google Scholar]). 2. For an insightful analysis of the role of the United States in the recent events in Honduras, see, for example, Vigna 2010 Vigna, A. 2010. Cómo Blanqear un Golpe de Estado. Le Monde Diplomatique en español, XIV(172): 24 [Google Scholar]. 3. Geo-political interventionism can be taken as a clear sign of imperial power and during the nineteenth century, before the rise of communism, the United States intervened 103 times in the period from 1798 to 1895, in a wide range of countries, from Japan and China to Nicaragua and Argentina – see Zinn (1996 Zinn, H. 1996. A People's History of the United States, New York: Longman. [Google Scholar], pp. 290–291). 4. In this sense I would disagree with Arditi (2008 Arditi, B. 2008. Arguments about the Left Turns in Latin America: a post-liberal politics?. Latin American Research Review, 43(3): 59–81. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], p. 60) who is quoted by Escobar and who has written an imaginative paper on ‘Left turns’ in Latin America; rather than maintain that struggles against imperialism and infringements of sovereignty are in decline it can be seen that with Chávez (Venezuela), Morales (Bolivia) and Correa (Ecuador) – not to mention Cuba – these are urgent and contemporary issues. 5. Elsewhere I have dealt with this issue in some detail, see Slater (2009 Slater, D. 2009. Exporting imperial democracy: critical reflections on the US case. Human Geography, 2(3): 24–36. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 6. For a detailed review and analysis of Latin American social movements, see Stahler-Sholk et al. (2008 Stahler-Sholk , R. et al. 2008 Latin American Social Movements in the Twenty-first Century , Boulder, CO , Rowman & Littlefield Publishers . [Google Scholar]). 7. This is an extensive field of analysis, but for two recent texts which are particularly useful see Chakrabarty (2008 Chakrabarty, D. 2008. Provincializing Europe, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and Connell (2007 Connell, R. 2007. Southern Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press. [Google Scholar]). 8. The Mexican social anthropologist Roger Bartra made the point that in many ways Latin American intellectuals are more global in orientation than their counterparts in the North, since in the global south intellectuals keep up to date with their own literature as well as that produced in the North – interview in Mexico City, April 2005. See Bartra (1996 Bartra, R. 1996. Las Redes Imaginarias del Poder Político, Mexico City: Editorial Oceano de Mexico. [Google Scholar]) for related discussion. 9. For an excellent critical review of these three international financial institutions see Peet (2009 Peet, R. 2009. Unholy Trinity, London: Zed Books. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]).

Reproducing power?

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Connelly, Diplomatic Revolution. 2. Indeed, 9 of the last 13 winners of the best‐first‐book prize of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations focused on US relations with the world beyond Europe. 3. Iriye, Global Community. 4. Baltzell, Protestant Establishment. 5. Connelly cites, to chilling effect, the writings of William Vogt, who termed tropical diseases ‘positive “advantages,” because they “prevented the development of overgrazing and overpopulation.”’ Vogt served as head of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in the early 1950s (pp. 129–30). 6. The final phrase refers to Sanjay Gandhi, apparently, once slapping his mother in public. 7. For examples of how historians have treated scholarly networks’ impact on intellectual life, see Crowther‐Heyck, ‘Patrons of the Revolution,’ 420–46; Krige, American Hegemony; Engerman, Know Your Enemy, chaps 1–3; Gilman, Mandarins of the Future, esp. chap. 4. 8. Engerman, ‘American Knowledge.’ Cohen‐Cole, ‘Thinking about Thinking in Cold War America.’ 9. Connelly, ‘Seeing Beyond the State,’ 197–233. Some of India's most drastic population control activities were closely connected with its ‘Emergency Period’ (1975–1977), when Indira Gandhi curtailed many aspects of democratic rule. 10. The citations here are too numerous to mention, but start with Wehler, Bismarck und der Imperialismus; Eley, ‘Defining Social Imperialism,’ 265–90. From a very different perspective, see May, Imperial Democracy. 11. See, for instance, Barnett and Finnemore, Rules for the World. 12. For examples of the struggle for critical distance, see Iriye, Global Community; Staples, Birth of Development; Maul, Menschenrechte, Sozialpolitik und Dekolonisation; and some of the volumes of the United Nations history – for instance, U.N. Contributions. 13. Cullather, ‘Miracles of Modernization,’ 227–54; Cullather, ‘Parable of Seeds.’ Perkins, Geopolitics and the Green Revolution. 14. Rosen, Western Economists; Sackley, ‘Passage to Modernity.’ 15. See Berman, Ideology of Philanthropy. 16. For more detail, see Engerman, ‘West Meets East.’ 17. The phrase is a quotation from Lord Kelvin. 18. See, for instance, Cullather, ‘Foreign Policy,’ 337–64; for other examples, see Engerman, ‘American Knowledge,’ 599–622. 19. Scott, Seeing Like a State, chap. 2; Anderson, Imagined Communities, chap. 10. Rafael, ‘White Love.’ Hirsch, Empire of Nations, chap. 3. 20. Quoted from a defender of population control – Kristof, ‘Birth Control for Others.’ See also the discussion in Helen Epstein, ‘The Strange History of Birth Control.’

Spór wokół idei demokratyzacji świata. „Wojna prewencyjna” czy „prewencyjna demokracja”?

It seemed that after the end of the Cold War the democratization process would spread freely ensuring world peace. However, a number of worrying events occurring in international relations have not confirmed these hopes. Robert Kagan asserts that the announcement about world peace in the early nineties of the twentieth century did not come true. In fact, the states have never stopped competing each other just like before the fall of communism. Kagan emphasizes that the characteristic feature in international relations is a rivalry between democratic and authoritarian states. He fears the growing importance of autocracy, especially in China and Russia. Therefore, he urges to promote of democracy and even to build a league of democratic nations as a forum where international disputes could be resolved. On the other hand, there are opinions saying that the importunate promotion of democracy, especially in the form of the “preventive war” in the region reluctant to adopt Western values, such as the countries of the Middle East, may cause more conflicts and no less. Democratic system is a hallmark of the West and not a universal truth. The success of the stabilization of democracy in countries with different culture can’t be the results of “preventive war” but a long process. Benjamin R. Barber proposes a noninvasive method to disseminate democracy. He believes that the best way to stabilize democracy in non-Western countries is a civic education. Development of education can eliminate those who may in the future become terrorists. Education reduces the strength of prejudice and moderates hate. Moreover, Barber stresses that support for local democracy through teaching is less costly than the force of arms. When Barack Obama took over power in the United States, it seemed that the strategy of “preventive war”, supported by neoconservatives, would be rejected. But the new president’s actions indicate that he doesn’t intend to negotiate with the enemies of freedom. It has turned out that Obama continues the tradition of American “democratic imperialism”. The implementation of neoconservative strategy ignoring the principle of “preventive democracy” portends a permanent conflict, which dismisses the prospect of world peace.

Pericles’ Statesmanship: Democratic Imperialism and Transformational Statecraft

[enter Abstract Body]In this paper, I argue that Pericles’ statesmanship offers an example of a rarer kind of ambition and the practice of statecraft that is not reducible to the extant theories of leadership in international relations. The realist perspective subjects leaders to the same functional necessity, state survival in the international system. Domestic theories attribute leaders' preferences to the domestic political system, the constituencies they are beholden to, and assume that their foreign policies are universally motivated by the desire to gain and remain in power. Although Pericles worked within the parameters of Athenian democracy and made Athens’ more democratic, his preternatural authority led Thucydides’ description of Athens as a democracy in name only, and effectively the rule of one man. Thucydides invites us to think about the nature of Pericles’ leadership and his political motivation. Did Pericles want to expand democracy out of principle or use the democratic base to attain political power? Was he loyal to his supporters, the laws of the city, divine laws, or to his own ideas and desires? What role did the Athenian empire play in his plans, and why did he pursue the international policies that he did? I define Pericles’ political motivation as grander ambition that was expressed in the desire to achieve eternal Athenian glory. Pericles’ political goals were visionary and their implementation depended upon his statesmanship on both domestic and the international levels. Pericles’ tenure in office was long and his influence was unmatched. As such a rare and gifted politician, he could channel his political ambition beyond the desire to sustain his office. Although he maintained popular appeal throughout his rule by satisfying public demands and expectations, as modern theories would predict, what Pericles did most effectively was to actually modify the public’s opinions and political orientation. He made them agree to policies that did violence against their most ingrained habits and sentiments. Therefore, contrary to extant political science theories about politics and policy, Pericles shaped and changed citizens’ preferences, rather than mechanically respond to them. The realization of Pericles’ Athenian ideal depended on attaining unrivaled political and moral superiority that was contingent on managing a growing empire. In peace, the expansion and management of the empire was an integral part of Pericles’ international statecraft. As circumstances between Sparta and Athens worsened Pericles shifted his imperial strategy toward a defense of Athens. Pericles’ grand strategy rested on the defense of the empire, because the empire itself was the mechanism that would enable Athens to endure the war. Using a radical defensive strategy, he holed up the Athenians inside the city walls. Pericles’ international decision put his domestic transformation of citizen psychology through two severe tests. First, he called on Athenians to jettison a heroic confrontation on the battlefield and become averse to losses with no prospect of gains, which was radical departure from the abundant benefactions that the empire bestowed on Athenians. Second, Pericles’ well crafted and rationalist defensive strategy was suddenly disrupted by the plague that decimated Athens and eventually struck down Pericles.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Women and War: Militarism, Bodies, and the Practice of Gender

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Women and War: Militarism, Bodies, and the Practice of Gender

Postcolonial disorientations: colonial ethnography and the vectors of the Philippine nation in the imperial frontier

This essay argues that American colonial governmentality in the early twentieth century was constituted by an ethnographic discourse that was inflected by an imperial frontier orientation. The frontier governmentality interdicts and disciplines Filipino society and culture for colonial formation, thus planting American frontier dreams in the state's education and land policies. But it was driven by the contradictions between two types of interdiction I call the “home” and “base” vectors, which have directed the disorientation of Philippine postcoloniality, trapping it between American dreams Filipinized to the hegemony of elite nationalism. As the mestizo elites came to embody Philippine nationalism in the later years of colonialism under the framework of imperial democracy, the Filipinization of the frontier ethnographic discourse entailed an elite autoethnography of racial blending, which produced a nation with an orientation seeping into the American Southeast Asian frontier. The Philippines is thus not simply an American client state, a cacique democracy or a deferred postcolony, but the vehicle of American imperial frontierism in Southeast Asia during the Cold War. The implication is that we are seeing the accentuation of the home/base contradictions in the frontier discourse in the fragmentation of the Philippine nation today, with Filipinos running through the enlarged frontiers of America's neoliberal empire as itinerant laborers.

Book Review: Sexual Decoys: Gender, Race and War in Imperial Democracy

Book Review: Sexual Decoys: Gender, Race and War in Imperial Democracy

Arundhati Roy, la force d’une seule femme face à la démocratie impériale prête à l’emploi

Mieux connu pour son roman Le Dieu des petits riens qui a ébloui le monde anglophone par son style novateur et choqué les lecteurs indiens en mettant en scène l’amour entre une femme de haute caste et un paria, Arundhati Roy est une écrivaine engagée qui dénonce les dérives pronucléaires et néolibérales du gouvernement indien et mène une lutte contre la mondialisation capitaliste là où elle se manifeste. Les essais polémiques que Roy a écrits après les attentats du 11 septembre s’attaquent de façon virulente à l’impérialisme américain. Elle déconstruit l’Empire en exposant les piliers invisibles de son architecture et en décodant sa rhétorique. Elle en analyse les présupposés éthiques, les rouages économiques, la pénétration culturelle et les implications juridiques afin de définir les stratégies de résistance pour réaffirmer les valeurs de la dignité humaine, de la justice sociale et de la paix. Dans le projet d’assiéger l’Empire, elle est appuyée par des dissidents célèbres tels que Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Amy Goodman et d’autres.