The BROTHERWISE DISPATCH, VOL.2, ISSUE#3, JUNE-AUGUST/2010
Susan Buck-Morss has authored several books including HEGEL, HAITI and UNIVERSAL HISTORY and is professor of political philosophy and social theory in the Department of Government at Cornell University.
BROTHERWISE DISPATCH-What are some of the most surprising aspects of the response(both the acclaim and the criticism) to your work HEGEL, HAITI and UNIVERSAL HISTORY? And as somewhat of a follow up, what is your response to the somewhat dismissive criticism leveled at your work from the NEW LEFT REVIEW?
SUSAN BUCK MORSS- Well, a lot of people don’t seem to get past the title. They think I am using the fact that Hegel was reading about the Haitian Revolution, when he wrote the dialectic of master and slave, in order to incorporate Haiti into a Hegelian version of universal history. Instead I am using that fact to criticize the whole Hegelian project and to redeem “universal history” on totally different grounds - away from identity theory, and identity politics. As for the NEW LEFT REVIEW critique, it focused exasperatingly on Hegel, as if he were the most important part of the story. Even here, the author ignored the enormous research that I did in the Hegel archives, and that I reported in the footnotes of “Hegel and Haiti” (lowering it to the status of supporting material), while he reached his own conclusion on his “own hunch, nothing more,” that I was wrong.
BD- That was one of the most troubling aspects of the NLR's review, in the sense that, rather than focus on the emancipatory potentialities your work unleashed, they were intent on towing the line and preserving the mythic integrity of a specific and fixed interpretation of Hegel which is grounded more on academic territorialism and western imperialism than on human liberation. But let's move on . . .
In your introduction to part one of your book, you state that "the construction of an object of research can hide as much as it illuminates". For our readers who are unfamiliar with your previous works and/or may have yet to read HEGEL, HAITI and UNIVERSAL HISTORY, would you explain how that relates to the very nature of your work as a critical theorist and how it informed the creation of this book on Hegel and the Haitian Revolution in particular?
SBM- Maybe that is the difference between a theorist and a historian. The historian already knows the object of research. The theorist writes in order to discover it. You are right that all of my books arrange historical data against the grain of traditional categories in order to expose the limits of conceptual imagination. DREAMWORLD and CATASTROPHE juxtaposed communist and capitalist forms to reveal how many beliefs and goals these two Cold-War enemies shared. In THINKING PAST TERROR, I considered Islamist thinkers like Sayyid Qutb and Mahmoud Mohamed Taha as belonging, not to some fundmentally “other” civilization, but to the sixties generation of radicals that included Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, and even Theodor Adorno – the goal was to discover, as a new object, a global public sphere.
In putting Hegel together with the Haitian Revolution, again as belonging to the same generation, I was violating all sorts of taboos, and I have to admit that I felt timid about even suggesting it. Of course, it was logical that Hegel, an avid reader of political journals, would have been familiar with the slave revolution that went on for the whole decade immediately before he published the famous master-slave dialectic in THE PHENOMENOLOGY of SPIRIT. But the authority of academic tradition can be extremely intimidating. How could I be right to see the connection when generations of Hegel scholars hadn’t even noticed? Historians tend to keep to their own turf: there are Caribbean historians, but they never talk to German intellectual historians – and as for philosophers, their languages can be incomprehensible to any outsider. There is just no cross-over institutionally. That’s a huge disadvantage, not just academically, but politically.
BD-Again, referencing HEGEL, HAITI and UNIVERSAL HISTORY, how much does the fact that the global spread of Enlightenment ideals was underwritten by the "systematic, highly sophisticated capitalist enslavement of non-Europeans as a labor force" speak to the inherent limitations of the Enlightenment ideals themselves?
SBM- I am not convinced that to point out the discrepancy between the universal principles of the Enlightenment and their violation in practice is enough to discredit the principles. Or to discredit abstractions as such. They do work pragmatically as “regulatory ideas” in Kant’s sense, that is, as criteria against which really existing conditions can be criticized and present power relations can be held accountable. But you are absolutely right to point out the structural contradiction, the discrepancy between an exploitative global economy and any principle of political justice, whether in the 18th century or the 21st. We cannot resolve the issues of political equality and social justice without confronting the intolerable global consequences of the so-called free market system. When politicians couple “free societies” with “free markets” they are already duping the people – and maybe themselves. It just isn’t true that private vices (the self-interest actions of individuals) result happily in public virtues on a collective level. Even Adam Smith saw through that illusion.
BD-You write that this "paradox between the discourse of freedom and the practice of slavery" which "marked the ascendancy of a succession of Western nations within the early modern global economy" didn't "trouble the logical consciousness of contemporaries" and then express your surprise(albeit somewhat tongue in cheek) that "present-day writers, while fully cognizant of the facts, are still capable of constructing Western histories as coherent narratives of human freedom." Your own generosity aside in granting that "the reasons do not need to be intentional"; how much does the continued construction of the history of the West as a coherent narrative of human freedom reveal an intrinsic loyalty not only to Enlightenment ideals, but to the continued maintenance of the emancipatory contradictions which serve as the foundation for Modernity as established through Western imperialism?
SBM- When it comes to “constructing Western histories as coherent narratives of human freedom,” I totally agree that this cannot be done today in good faith. But here is the issue: we need knowledge of history, now more than ever. Fred Jameson is right to point out the post-modern dangers of collective amnesia. The question is, what kinds of histories. The enormous gains in historical knowledge were made in the nineteenth century by the same European societies that enacted world imperialism. These conterminous projects were not accidentally related. So the telling of alternative histories that actually change the structure of collective memory is a central task of education. And the philosophy of history – history (Benjamin), not ontology (Heidegger) – is a central task of critical theory.
BD- This last question is about the potentialities of emancipatory praxis and very much related to your statement that "in the name of universal humanity, the vanguard justifies its own violence as a higher truth" and again "imagination, intending to set the world aright, makes a virtue out of violence against the violator". How can it be otherwise when a "violator" has no intention of reigning in the oppressive violence which maintains his dominance? In other words, in attempting to rightfully address the possible excesses of revolutionary violence, do you not run the risk of endorsing the actual structural-inert violence of the status quo? Or worse, might such words be interpreted as complicit in stifling the human agency needed to resist and confront such oppressive violence and attempt to bring it to an end?
SBM- This is the central political dilemma, no matter what the theoretical frame of your argument. Of course, the slaves who revolted on Saint-Domingue didn’t just declare their liberty; they fought for it, to the death. It is hard to refute the necessity for counter-violence. Marxists, with reason, claim that when it comes to maintaining the violent status quo, “pacifism is the most murderous ideology.” Islamists, with just as much reason, argue that the ethical imperative of “forbidding wrong” justifies jihad against those who violate Muslims. But a reign of terror inevitably follows: the counter-racism of Haiti’s founding, the Red Terror of the Bolshevik Revolution, public executions by the revolutionary Republic of Iran. To be willing to die for your principles brings public honor. But it produces, on the other side of the coin, a willingness to kill for them. Principles are abstract; they entail an abstract “enemy,” so that anyone who is identified with the enemy label is vulnerable to destruction, no matter what that person’s actual intentions, feelings, sentiments, or moral code – no matter whether she or he has actually harmed anyone, no matter whether you actually like or respect the person, no matter whether that person is your sister or brother! This logic has been repeated so many times in history – regardless of the ideology – that no political movement should consider itself exempt. There must be another way to imagine collective life. The logical resolution to the master-slave dialectic is recognition among equals. Hegel saw that actually happen in the Haitian Revolution. There must also be a way to resolve the dialectic between friend and foe, self and other. That is the political task of our time.
On behalf of Susan Buck-Morss and The Brotherwise Dispatch,
peace,
-A. Shahid Stover
This has been the first of our BROTHERWISE FIVE interview series, where The BROTHERWISE DISPATCH will interrogate intellectuals, artists and activists with five probing questions to the delight of our readers.
(This interview of Susan Buck-Morrs for The BROTHERWISE DISPATCH was conducted by A. Shahid Stover intermittently via email between late April through May of 2010.)
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