Dive into the theatricality of history as the discussion connects the Haitian and French Revolutions. The haunting legacy of absolute monarchy within modern democracies is examined, challenging perceptions of leadership. Explore the relationship between nationalism and global capitalism, emphasizing class struggles' impact on political frameworks. The conversation critiques authoritarian tendencies in liberal democracies and highlights the need for genuine societal transformation beyond electoral changes. Join in as frustrations surrounding the 'Return of the Repressed' are navigated in both personal and societal realms.
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insights INSIGHT
History's Drama
History's drama lies in representing repetitions of class societies and their crises.
We also experience the unresolved structure of universal emancipation.
insights INSIGHT
Repetition Compulsion
Representative democracies are vulnerable to authoritarianism because they displace class conflict.
Karatani suggests this vulnerability leads to a repetition compulsion.
In this essay, Marx examines how the class struggle in France led to the circumstances that enabled Louis Bonaparte to seize power. He discusses the role of the individual in history, noting that 'Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.' The work is also significant for its insights into the nature and meaning of fascism, with Bonaparte's coup seen as a precursor to 20th-century fascist movements.
History and Repetition
History and Repetition
Kojin Karatani
The Black Jacobins
Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
C. L. R. James
Written by C.L.R. James in 1938, 'The Black Jacobins' is a pioneering historical work that recounts the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1804. The book places the revolution in the context of the French Revolution and highlights the leadership of Toussaint L'Ouverture, who rose from being a slave to a prominent figure espousing the French Revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality. James's work challenges conventional historiography by emphasizing the agency of the enslaved and their role in shaping their own history. It also explores the broader implications of the Haitian Revolution, linking it to the destruction of European feudalism and the global struggle against colonialism and slavery[1][4][5].
Black reconstruction
W.E.B. Du Bois
Published in 1935, 'Black Reconstruction in America' challenges the dominant views of the time by portraying the Reconstruction period as a critical time of Black advancement and a near-revolution of anti-racism and societal change. Du Bois argues that African Americans were active agents of their emancipation and that the period was a second American revolution aimed at democratizing the South. The book critiques traditional historians' views and highlights the significance of African American agency in building U.S. democracy, despite the ultimate failure of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow laws[3][4][5].
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Black Reconstruction, and The Black Jacobins. What do these three texts have in common? They all aim to make a historical moment legible as a drama. In doing so, Marx, W.E.B. Du Bois, and C.L.R. James seem to show that history has a structure of repetition. But what could repetition mean? In this episode, we discuss an essay by the Japanese Marxist Kojin Karatani on Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire. We explore Karatani’s theory for why representative democracies seem condemned to degenerating into authoritarian crisis, what a Marxist concept of repetition could mean, and the relationships between political crises and economic crises. Come join us as we ring in a new year that has made it possible for “a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero’s part.”
References:
Kojin Karatani, “On The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”, trans. Seiji M. Lippit, in History and Repetition, ed. Seiji M. Lippit (Columbia University Press, 2012).
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