To Escape and Yet Remain

Refashioning Tradition

Bibliographic Data

ID6445320
AuthorsRajbir Singh Judge (0000-0002-1641-9987, California State University, Long Beach, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume26
Issue1
Pages80-93
Publication date2023-11-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Theology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1462-317X • E-ISSN: 1743-1719
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1462317x.2023.2281821
OpenAlexW4388808566
LanguageEN
References cited31

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size AcknowledgmentsI am grateful to Omnia El Shakry and Zunaira Komal for reading drafts of this article.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Alexis de Tocqueville, cited in Anidjar, “Can the Walls Hear?,” 261.2 Marriott, Whither Fanon?, xv.3 Ibid., 62–3.4 Ibid., 63–4. Later on, again, Marriott underscores how one common misreading of Fanon is to read his theory of violence as a Hegelian struggle in which colonizer/colonized are a version of master/slave. Marriott writes “I am not saying that this reading is wrong, and certain aspects of it could be read into Black Skin, White Masks; but in The Wretched of the Earth decolonial violence is far from its Hegelian origin and refers to a struggle that that is not to the death, but with and from death, a struggle that seeks to go beyond the death in life that, however dialectical, no philosophical anthropology has yet grasped, and that reveals a certain aporia within the language of sovereignty” (228). Also see Marriott, Haunted Life, 55. For a different reading of dialectics and Fanon, see Ciccariello-Maher, Decolonzing Dialectics, 70–3.5 Marriott, Whither Fanon?, 64.6 Ibid., 64.7 Ibid., 65.8 Ibid., 65. Camille Robcis, on the other hand, argues that Fanon remained committed to disalienation. She writes, “to set up what he considered a truly disalienated and disalienating psychiatry, a psychiatry close to the notion of ‘national culture’ that Fanon theorized in his last and best-known book, The Wretched of the Earth” (305). See Robcis, “Frantz Fanon, Institutional Psychotherapy,” 305.9 Scott, Refashioning Futures, 105.10 Marriott, Whither Fanon?, 217, 224.11 El Shakry, “Rethinking Arab Intellectual History,” 564.12 Marriott, Whither Fanon?, ix.13 A tabula rasa is, as Marriott writes, “an inscription that is always the abyss of itself, for it is written on nothing” (276).14 Marriott, Whither Fanon?, 275.15 See Asad, Secular Translations.16 Marriott, Whither Fanon?, 313.17 Ibid., 20–1.18 Scott, Conscripts of Modernity, 94.19 In Conscripts of Modernity, Scott writes that The Wretched of the Earth is a programmatic articulation of such understanding of colonialism and, therefore, anti-colonial criticism. Scott writes, “This strategy enabled the formulation and sharp expression of the anticolonial demand – the unequivocal demand for immediate sovereignty. The anticolonial demand operated through the construction of a picture of colonialism as denial, terror, and violence” (Scott, Conscripts of Modernity, 94–5).20 A problem-space is, as Scott writes, “a context of argument and, therefore, one of intervention. A problem-space, in other words, is an ensemble of questions and answers around which a horizon of identifiable stakes (conceptual as well as ideological-political stakes) hangs” (4). See Scott, Conscripts of Modernity. I return to this below.21 Scott, Refashioning Futures, 204. Marriott rightly critiques this invocation of “we.”22 Ibid., 204.23 For collapsing into allegory, see Marriott, Whither Fanon?, 21. For “degodded,” see Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom,” 263.24 Scott, Conscripts of Modernity, 2.25 Ibid., 12.26 Marriott, Whither Fanon?, 21.27 Ibid., 26. Or as Marriott writes in relation to Mbembe: “Fanon’s revolutionary description seems like one of those many tragic narratives of liberation whose salutary unease we continue to be inspired by even if we can no longer share its passions or convictions” (71). See Marriott, “The Becoming-Black of the World?.”28 Iqbal, “Asad and Benjamin,” 78.29 Löwith, Meaning in History.30 The literature on historicism is vast. I rely on Hacking, Historical Ontology; Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition; Shakry, “Rethinking Arab Intellectual History.” Such historicism, as Ian Hacking writes, “pays little attention to the complex interweavings of past and present” (53).31 Marriott, Whither Fanon?, 26.32 Though Scott, too, questions this logic. He notes that good politics are not necessarily tied to good histories (104). Scott, Refashioning Futures.33 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 179. Also see Marriott, Whither Fanon?, 28.34 Marriott, Whither Fanon?, 238.35 Ibid., 23.36 Ibid., 275.37 Ibid., 28.38 Ibid., 294–5.39 Ibid., 298.40 Ibid., 23.41 Ibid., 299.42 Ibid., 23.43 Ibid., 20.44 Ibid., 29.45 Ibid., 217.46 Ibid., 224. It is important to note, even though I do not have time to dwell on this, but as Marriott writes, “blackness must remain fugitive even to the concept of fugitivity” (215).47 Marriott, Whither Fanon?, 225.48 Ibid., 312.49 Ibid., 293–4.50 Ibid., 296.51 Ibid., 296. This is a larger aspect of Marriott’s project as well. As Zakiyyah Iman Jackson writes, Marriott, in On Black Men, turns the reading “toward as opposed to averting one’s gaze from the negativity of the historical present” (359). See Jackson, “Waking Nightmares.”52 Marriott, Whither Fanon?, 27.53 Scott, “The Tragic Sensibility of Talal Asad,” 136. As Scott notes, Asad does not merely reject Marx and his interlocutors. In the same volume, Asad notes his reliance on Louis Althusser and his understanding of time since Althusser “allows one to address the question of causality in other than mechanical terms” – an understanding “akin to what Althusser used to call structural causality, where time is not a linear sequence of before and after” missed in typical understandings of ideology (290). See Asad, “The Trouble of Thinking.” As Ed Pluth elucidates well: “A structural cause is thus not fully determining of a situation, and this is just what the notion of determination in the last instance is supposed to be getting at. There may well be a dominant shape to a given domain, but there is always more in the domain than what is causing its particular, dominant shape” (350). See Pluth, “Freeing Althusser from Spinoza.” Put another way, time is a “theater without an author” (347). See Althusser and Balibar, Reading Capital.54 Scott, “The Tragic Sensibility of Talal Asad,” 151. For more on agency, see Mahmood, Politics of Piety.55 Anidjar, “Can The Walls Hear?,” 256.56 The literature is vast on the secular and historicity. For example, see Abeysekara, The Politics of Postsecular Religion; Mahmood, Religious Difference in a Secular Age; Hollywood, Acute Melancholia and Other Essays; El Shakry, “Rethinking Arab Intellectual History.”57 Iqbal, “Asad and Benjamin,” 79.58 For more, see Asad, “Are There Histories of Peoples,” 607.59 Asad, The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam, 14.60 The distinction between “founding” and “foundational” here is essential as founding can be anti-foundational. I owe this insight to Tanzeen Doha, who highlights this distinction in an unpublished paper.61 Asad, Secular Translations, 94.62 MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 222.63 Scott, Formations of Ritual, 241.64 Ibid., xix.65 Ibid., xviii.66 Ibid., 115.67 In Conscripts of Modernity, Scott highlights this dislocation within this present and how new problems arise in relation to the shifts in tradition. He writes “the efficacy of old distinctions and old options wanes, fades, becomes obsolete. The old paths do not necessarily disappear altogether. They may well remain dimly visible along with remnants of the languages that articulated them” (116). See Scott, Conscripts of Modernity.68 Abeysekara, Colors of the Robe.69 Povinelli, Empire of Love, 143.70 I borrow experiences and expectations, from Koselleck, Futures Past.71 Povinelli, Empire of Love. Also see, Povinelli, The Cunning of Recognition Indigenous Alterities.72 Asad, Secular Translations, 95.73 Ibid., 55–98.74 For an incisive reading of Islam and Fanon Studies, see Davis, “’Incommensurate Ontologies? Anti-Black Racism.”75 Marriott, Whither Fanon?, 28.76 Ibid., 228.77 Ibid., 36.78 Ibid., 278.79 Ibid., 241.80 Ibid., 280.81 Ibid., 244.82 Ibid., 244.83 Ibid., 241.84 Ibid., 242.85 Ibid., 305.86 Ibid., 281.87 Ibid., 227.88 Ibid., 310–11.89 Ibid., 311.90 Ibid., 281.91 Ibid., 313.92 Scott, “The Tragic Sensibility of Talal Asad,” 144.93 Sloterdijk, “Synchronous World.” Also see Heidegger, “The Age of World Picture.”94 Slisli, “Islam: The Elephant.”95 Marriott, Whither Fanon?, 76.96 Ibid., 102.97 Ibid., 103.98 Ibid., 103.99 Ibid., 104.100 Ibid., 104.101 Ibid., 105.102 The goal, in other words, is not to locate a prior fluid identity against a present rigid one. As Parisa Vaziri writes, “the self-evidence of fluid rather than rigid racial distinction contains and reproduces its own significance while leaving unstated why such an opposition is the appropriate frame by which to understand differences designated as racial in the first place” (251). See Vaziri, “On ‘Saidiya’: Indian Ocean World Slavery.”103 Doha, “Review of Fifty Years of the Battle of Algiers.” Also see Davis, “The US Academy and the Provincialization.”104 Anidjar, “Can The Walls Hear?,” 263.105 Ibid., 261.106 Ibid., 262.107 Fanon’s interlocutors made a similar critique. As Davis explains, “Mohamed El-Mili, who worked with Fanon and Malek at El Moudjahid and was close to Islamic modernist circles, was adamant that Fanon’s secular humanism was much closer to the French Left than to the ideologies of some of his Algerian comrades. In 1971, writing in Arabic, El-Mili chided Fanon for his belief that decolonization could represent a clean break with the past. He speculated that ‘if Fanon had been a Muslim or permeated by Arabic, or Islamic culture, then his position on the past would have been different.’ A similar critique came from the well-known Algerian sociologist Abdelkader Djeghloul, who defended a dissertation on Fanon in France the same year.” See Davis, “The US Academy and the Provincialization of Fanon.”108 Marriott, Whither Fanon?, xvii.109 Derrida, Specters of Marx, 54.110 See Anidjar, “Secularism.”111 Pandolfo, Knot of the Soul, 9.112 Ibid., 9.113 Ibid., 243.114 Marriott, Whither Fanon?, 298.115 Ibid., 298.116 For example, as El Shakry writes, “Sufism, like psychoanalysis, was itself an ethical encounter with the Other mediated by the domain of the unconscious” (59). See El Shakry, The Arabic Freud.117 El Shakry, “History and the Lesser Death.”Additional informationNotes on contributorsRajbir Singh JudgeRajbir Singh Judge is assistant professor of history at California State University, Long Beach

Aesthetics · Environmental ethics · Political economy · Political science · Sociology · African cultural and philosophical studies · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Philosophy · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics

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