At the first session of Revolution 13\/13<\/a>, three questions emerged as central problematics for this year\u2019s public seminar. I will specify them in as precise terms as possible to help guide our conversation over the coming months:<\/p>\n Now, to a certain extent, in his original essay<\/a> and also in response to Seyla Benhabib\u2019s intervention at the first seminar, Biodun Jeyifo<\/a> distanced himself from this first question. In his essay, Jeyifo wrote:<\/p>\n This question is absolutely unnecessary and I withdraw it without any hesitation. It is completely unhelpful to have to choose between a Theodor Adorno and a Mahatma Gandhi; or between Hannah Arendt and Mao Zedong; or between Michel Foucault and James Baldwin. To put the matter in the most defetishized manner possible, it is like comparing one field of valuation or plane of observation against a totally different one.[i]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I agree entirely that there is no reason\u2014that it may be counterproductive\u2014to rank these different categories of thinkers as better or more important. There is no reason to exclude or belittle one group. And there is no doubt that the crosspollination between academic and worldly philosophers is extraordinarily productive, as we saw when we explored, during Nietzsche 13\/13<\/a>, the relationship between Frantz Fanon<\/a>, or Aim\u00e9 C\u00e9saire<\/a>, or Ali Shari\u2019ati<\/a> and<\/em> Nietzsche\u2019s writings.<\/p>\n Despite all that, the question of the difference<\/em>\u2014not the superiority or inferiority, but the difference<\/em>\u2014between academic critical theorists and worldly philosophers is at the very heart of Biodun Jeyifo\u2019s original challenge<\/a>. And it is of utmost importance!<\/p>\n If our ambition is to go beyond \u201ccrisis & critique\u201d and the diagnoses of our contemporary crises, if our ambition is to push critical philosophy further to the question of \u201ccritique & praxis,\u201d then it becomes crucial to ask ourselves: What is the difference between engaging the written work of someone like Kwame Nkrumah, Rosa Luxemburg, or Ho Chi Minh, versus grappling with the work of Foucault, Arendt, Deleuze, or Adorno? Is there something about being situated in the academy that has effects or that does a certain kind of work? Does it matter, does it differ, to be located in the university, to be a teacher or a professor<\/em>\u2014from Latin, a person who \u201cprofesses,\u201d[ii]<\/a> in these times, someone who tends to profess knowledge of a specific kind, often today \u201cbook knowledge\u201d?<\/p>\n Now, many of the thinkers that we so often turn to, in these 13\/13 public seminars, are or were located in the academy: Adorno, Althusser, Arendt, Deleuze, Du Bois, Foucault, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Said, Spivak. Some were not: Beauvoir, C\u00e9saire, Fanon, Marx, Sartre. But most of those who we will be engaging this year were definitely not: Baldwin, Gramsci, C.L.R. James, Lenin, Luxemburg, Nkrumah, George Padmore\u2014and I hope we will get to George Jackson, Bobby Sands, Nelson Mandela, Nadine Gordimer, Steve Biko, Jose Mariategui, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara \u2013 all very far from the academy\u2026<\/p>\n To be sure, some were at the interstices. Sartre was not in the academy, but practically. Walter Rodney taught at the University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and the University of the West Indies (Jamaica). Stuart Hall was professor of sociology and had an impressive academic career. This is not a binary distinction, rather more of a spectrum. But nevertheless, for the most part, we are defining worldly philosophers as being non-academics who were intimately involved in revolutions. The question then arises: What difference does it make to be outside <\/em>the academy, when it comes to questions of critique and praxis?<\/p>\n This second question raises a complicated issue regarding the possible autonomy of critique and whether it is even possible to distinguish, to separate, or to delineate ideas from action. One definition of praxis itself is \u201cto engage in critique\u201d\u2014which has the tendency to collapse critique and praxis. But I think it is important to try to maintain some differentiation between theory and practice. And if we do, then the question arises whether certain practices\u2014especially revolutionary practices\u2014have effects on the resulting writings.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take the example of Fanon. As we all know, Fanon joined the FLN when he was in Algeria and contributed to the FLN\u2019s underground paper al-Moujahid. <\/em>When he was expulsed from Algeria, Fanon moved to Tunisia to continue his militancy with the FLN, and was ultimately appointed ambassador to Ghana. Was there something about those acts that imprints something, some difference, in the resulting work, The Wretched of the Earth<\/em>, at a theoretical or practical level?<\/p>\n When we read, for instance, the passage on pages 153-154 of Wretched of the Earth<\/em>, where Fanon is specifically addressing N\u00e9gritude and the First and Second Congresses of Black Writers and Artists, do we read them differently because of his political engagement? Does it cast a light on or infuse his discussion of the participation of Black Americans?<\/p>\n Negritude thus came up against its first limitation, namely, those phenomena that take into account the historicizing of men. \u201cNegro\u201d or \u201cNegro-African\u201d culture broke up because the men who set out to embody it realized that every culture is first and foremost national, and that the problems for which Richard Wright or Langston Hughes had to be on the alert were fundamentally different from those faced by L\u00e9opold Senghor or Jomo Kenyatta.[iii]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Is Fanon\u2019s analysis<\/em> of N\u00e9gritude different\u2014qualitatively, in kind\u2014from that of someone who would be situated in the academy and for that reason? Is it different because Fanon had implicated himself in a revolutionary movement? Was it because of his actions that we might read the text differently? Biodun Jeyifo proposed, as an exercise or case study, that we compare Fanon\u2019s arguments against N\u00e9gritude to those of scholars such as Stanislas Adotevi in N\u00e9gritude et N\u00e9grologues<\/em> or \u201cNegritude is dead: the burial,\u201d or the work of Marcien Towa or Jean-Marie Ndengue. This would be a useful exercise, almost a natural experiment.<\/p>\n Or how about this passage, nearby, where Fanon writes:<\/p>\n Colonialism [\u2026] inevitably leads to a glorification of cultural phenomena that become continental instead of national, and singularly racialized. In Africa, the reasoning of the intellectual is Black-African or Arab-Islamic. It is not specifically national. Culture is increasingly cut off from reality.\u201d[iv]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Do we read and understand this passage differently because Fanon would implicate himself in the FLN?<\/p>\n Now, to be sure, we would have to acknowledge that Fanon, because of his situatedness within <\/em>an anti-colonial armed movement, had expertise on colonialism that could not be found merely in the archives or the books. That\u2019s undoubtedly true; but that\u2019s too easy.<\/p>\n The more demanding question is: Does the fact that someone like Fanon implicates himself in revolt give his writings a different weight or quality for our analyses today of critique & praxis, by contrast, that is, to someone located within the academy, the professoriate, the research community? And if so, what is that difference?<\/p>\n Seyla Benhabib puts a lot of pressure on these distinctions in her comments. In her essay \u201cOn the unity and dissonance of Critique and Praxis<\/a>,\u201d Benhabib emphasizes that the project of pushing critique toward praxis, in the way in which I am trying to do, suffers from a confusion over the demarcation between praxis, strategy and tactics. Benhabib writes that the project \u201cconflates strategy and philosophy; critique and tactics.\u201d[v]<\/a><\/p>\n I take this challenge very seriously\u2014and anticipate that this year\u2019s seminars will spend a lot of effort working at the intersection of praxis-strategy-tactics. Surely, the lines are more fluid than bright. And they are often, sometimes intentionally, problematized. You will recall that Toni Negri and Michael Hardt argue in Assembly <\/em>for the inversion of strategy and tactics: arguing against pure leaderlessness, they take the position that we should \u201ctransform the role of leadership by inverting strategy and tactics\u201d: let the multitude decide on strategy, but the leaders decide on tactics.[vi]<\/a><\/p>\n For now, though, there remains an important question for us. To put it in its most concrete form, the question is: How might the distinction between, on the one hand, critical philosophers located in the academy and, on the other hand, worldly philosophers located outside, help us think about the space of praxis and its demarcation (or not) from what we might call \u201cstrategies\u201d or \u201ctactics\u201d?<\/p>\n Those three concrete questions will guide us in much of our discussions in Revolution 13\/13\u2014at least, I hope they will be fruitful and productive.<\/p>\n At this early juncture, I will also throw out one hypothesis\u2014far too much of a generalization (all of which are always wrong), far too preliminary, but nonetheless, something that intrigues and certainly interpellates me. Again, this is a mere hypothesis.<\/p>\n Is it possible that the worldly philosophers see things in starker moral or ethical or political terms? Is it possible that they see things more \u201cblack and white\u201d \u2013 an expression that resonates, naturally, with the anti-colonial struggles we discuss in Revolution 1\/13 and 2\/13?<\/p>\n I am reminded here, for example, of the tension between Bertolt Brecht and the academic members of the Frankfurt School.[vii]<\/a> Might it be that those outside the academy tend to be more Brechtian in their view of the world? I am reminded here as well of those special years, in the early 1970s, when even academic critical philosophers, such as Foucault or Deleuze, implicated and immersed themselves in social movements\u2014I will return to this later. They participated in the work of the Groupe d\u2019information sur les prisons <\/em>(\u201cGIP\u201d or Prisons Information Group); they engaged in a form of academic rebellion, helping to organize the experimental university campus at Vincennes. To be sure, we are far from revolutionary action. This is not like joining the FLN. There are gradations of implication. But those moments, even among academic critical theorists, seem to have been marked, sometimes explicitly, by a conception of \u201cthe intolerable\u201d \u2013 as in the enqu\u00eates intol\u00e9rables<\/em> of the GIP\u2013 that demarcates more clearly certain political, ethical, moral lines.<\/p>\n Is this a question of temperament? Does it implicate questions of self-doubt, skepticism, certainty, nuance and complexity, or resolution? Is it a psychological question? What accounts for le passage <\/em>\u00e0 l\u2019acte<\/em>?<\/p>\n I have a certain fondness for the Brechtian worldview, I must confess. (You will recall Theo Bleckmann\u2019s brilliant and inspiring musical rendition of Brecht\u2019s The Threepenny Opera <\/em>last year at Abolition Democracy 5\/13<\/a> on the abolition of property. If we had the time, I would rewind the tape\u2026) The Brechtian worldview often feels sharper, more delineated, more resolute. It seems more engaged.<\/p>\n But this is just a preliminary hypothesis\u2014one that was immediately challenged at the seminar. So, for now, it is just an idea to keep in mind. The important point here is to discern these three questions for our forthcoming discussions.<\/p>\n [i]<\/a> Biodun Jeyifo, \u201cAn \u2018illuminati\u2019 and its acolytes: Critical theory in the text and in the world,\u201d British Journal of Sociology <\/em>72, no. 3 (June 2021): 863-870, at 868.<\/p>\n [ii]<\/a> As the Oxford English Dictionary <\/em>notes, the etymology of \u201cprofessor\u201d is the following: \u201cAnglo-Norman\u00a0proffessur<\/em>\u00a0and Middle French\u00a0professeur<\/em>\u00a0(French\u00a0professeur<\/em>) person who professes (c<\/em>1275 in Anglo-Norman), academic teacher of an art or science, or of the law (1337 in\u00a0proffesseur en loys<\/em>\u00a0), person who openly professes the Christian faith (15th cent.) and its etymon classical Latin\u00a0professor<\/em>\u00a0person who declares, person who claims to be expert in some art or science, teacher, in post-classical Latin also person who professes a faith (early 3rd cent. in Tertullian), person who takes religious vows (13th cent. in British sources), university academic (frequently 1304\u20131583 in British sources) <\u00a0profess-<\/em>\u00a0, past participial stem of\u00a0profit\u0113r\u012b<\/em>\u00a0profess\u00a0v.<\/em><\/a>\u00a0+\u00a0-or<\/em>\u00a0-or\u00a0suffix<\/em><\/a>. Compare Old Occitan\u00a0professor<\/em>\u00a0(Occitan\u00a0professor<\/em>), Catalan\u00a0professor<\/em>\u00a0(early 15th cent.), Spanish\u00a0profesor<\/em>\u00a0(1359 as\u00a0professor<\/em>), Portuguese\u00a0professor<\/em>\u00a0(15th cent.), Italian\u00a0professore<\/em>\u00a0(1389).\u201d Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. \u201cProfessor,\u201d accessed September 22, 2021.<\/p>\n [iii]<\/a> Franz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth<\/em>, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 2004), 154.<\/p>\n [iv]<\/a> Fanon, Wretched of the Earth<\/em>, 154.<\/p>\n [v]<\/a> Seyla Benhabib, \u201cOn the unity and dissonance of critique and praxis,\u201d British Journal of Sociology <\/em>72, no.3 (June 2021): 862.<\/p>\n [vi]<\/a> See, generally, <\/em>Bernard E. Harcourt, Critique & Praxis <\/em>(New York: Columbia University Press, 2020), 37-38.<\/p>\n [vii]<\/a> See, generally, <\/em>Harcourt, Critique & Praxis<\/em>, 63-65.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Bernard E. Harcourt At the first session of Revolution 13\/13, three questions emerged as central problematics for this year\u2019s public seminar. I will specify them in as precise terms as possible to help guide our conversation over the coming… Continue Reading \n
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A Brechtian Hypothesis<\/h2>\n
Notes<\/h1>\n