Appealing to the World
Du Bois and the Transnational Politics of Petition
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4436687 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Adam Dahl (0000-0001-8815-9689, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 123 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 485-503 |
| Publication date | 2024-07-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | South Atlantic Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-2876 • E-ISSN: 1527-8026 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00382876-11235591 |
| OpenAlex | W4400938280 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 21 |
As a mode of radical, anti-colonial politics, the petition and related genre of the appeal would seem to hold little promise. This paper uncovers the radical and transnational politics of petitioning in W. E. B. Du Bois's work with and against the United Nations in the 1940s. Examining a range of petitions beyond the more widely examined Appeal to the World (1947), this article argues that Du Bois subverts the familiar genre conventions of the petition and appeal. The effect is not an appeal to a higher political authority to correct domestic injustices but to contest the shape of the international order itself by highlighting the transnational connection between colonial domination and racial exclusion within the domestic jurisdiction of imperial nation-states and the racial hierarchies of the international order. Instead of leaving the authority of the international order defined by the primacy of the sovereign state system intact, Du Bois contests this authority by exposing how racial hierarchy and colonial rule cut against enshrined divisions between internal state sovereignty and international law. The essay closes by exploring how other anti-colonial figures in the twentieth century such as B. R. Ambedkar and Malcolm X similarly turned to the transnational politics of appeal
Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Anarchism and Radical Politics · Law · Political theory and Gramsci · Race, History, and American Society
Black and red
Rising Wind
Boundaries of the International
Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law
Acute Delirium due to Parenteral Tramadol
Transnational Cosmopolitanism
W. E. B. Du Bois
Out of Oakland
The Anticolonial Front
W. E. B. Du Bois
On Becoming Less of the World
Freedom Time
Worldmaking after Empire
Sovereign Address
David Walker and the Political Power of the Appeal
Declaration as Disavowal
The Declaration of Independence
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |