1. Respectfully, always wary of those who teach political science/history. Usually means not a historian.
2. Only the 1% could understand any of this, so how does this speak to or for the oppressed masses of the West/world any more than Woke elites do?
3. Agree fully with the critique of that Woke assumption of speaking for the oppressed. They are doing a terrible job from their 3-bedroom suburban homes, earning capitalist paychecks while parroting Marx, Fanon, Freire and Said.
(This is why we can’t trust the far Left.)
4. Mamdani does not ‘show’ anything about colonial identities. He makes up whatever suits him, like Said, Foucault, Fanon did, and 95% of leftist scholars do. Hows that Uganda working out for you Mahmood? Or India for that matter? He is making it all up, due to his Afrocentrism and idealization of Uganda, Rwanda and well everywhere in Africa. Life is good at Harvard though!! Historians of all stripes on the other hand know very well how collaborative, cemented AND fluid, neither this nor that, and how packed with agency were all those ‘colonial identities’ – whatever that might actually mean for hundreds of millions of separate individuals over centuries across the whole planet. Which colonial government ossified all that glorious arcadian pre European identity fluidity? Colonial govts all differed, from year to year, state to state, governor to governor. Generalization is pointless, about ethics, or profits, let alone personal identities. How au courant.
5. These ever increasing claims about present day colonial consequences are never based on clear historical causation. They are assumed or at best correlative. How do you even calculate what caused this or that today, here in the US, in Ireland, Botswana, Chile or China. Its impossible.
6. Criticizing the Enlightenment is like criticizing capitalism, ‘politicians’ or ones parents. Its banal. Without the Enlightenment, there would be no freedom for the likes of those noted above (and todays Woke scholars) to express their partially Marxist, utterly partisan, selfserving, mostly made-up viewpoints. (Except Foucault of course, privileged party boy who could say what he wanted and do what he wanted…) To anybody who comfortably, loudly, fearlessly critiques the Enlightenment from their cushioned couches, their joyful 9 month jobs and their well-filled bellies, I say: tell me all about the other traditions around the world in 1800. In fact why don’t you go to those places now. Then call us, if you can, when you get there, and let us know how Woke scholars in the West can claim the Enlightenment was somehow responsible for all the authoritarian cultures worldwide that long preceded its emergence in Europe, that thrived alongside it, that repudiated it consistently against the best advice of well-intentioned Europeans, that gained from many of its precepts - all those authoritarian cultures that are now more than ever now thriving worldwide in oppression, abuses, corruption and censorship - except for in, well, the region the Enlightenment originated. (The US as ever is a mixed bag….but)
7. The Enlightenment WAS mostly responsible for the Haitian Revolution. That’s clear. And Wilberforce. And Quakers. And of course many brave enslaved people. But, oh have you read what happened when the rebels were left to themselves? Interesting history there, but never noted normally. Division, fraction, black on black difference, regional rivalries, fissures from those with slave to middling to free status, across ideology, across class status, and so on. Why do I mention this? Because that is how, if we must generalize, essentially every indigenous kingdom was prior to the arrival of the vile Enlightenment minded white devils. Just like Europeans. They were all the same. They were all weird early modern humans, from Paris to Manila, to Paraguay to Mali . The noble savage idealization is so 1950s, but it persists. “They were oh so happy before…!!!” Right. Give me some Azteca sacrifice partying over a Bud light anytime.
8. The Enlightenment was certainly NOT responsible for Nazism. That was the epitome of anti-Enlightenment, rightwing conservative nationalism gone to hell and its extremes.
(This is why we can’t trust the far Right.)
9. Why would Diderot NOT be Eurocentric? In 1780? Was Al Wahabi Islamocentric? Was the Qing Emperor Sinocentric? The king of Kongo Afrocentric? The Shogun Japanocentric? Why do we expect SO much more of 18th century Europeans? Its not as if they were racially or intellectually superior or anything ridiculous like that…His Encyclopedie is actually very Woke for the time. And pretty much any elite from the non-West then would have praised its incredible depth of knowledge, if they could read.
10. Wokeness is worse than conservatism for free speech. Hurts me to say that, but its obvious.
11. Neiman is right. Otherwise this is very very impressive, really.
Thanks for this piece and the useful queries set out so clearly by Salim Lennox. The latter is correct to link the new authoritatrinism of wokery with the left (especially in the USA with its unending capacity to re-vamp inividualism and commodify it for profit) as well as to distrust the far right and point up that Nazism was not a product of the Enlightenment. None of us need to idealise the latter but we can defend some principles of universalism in its wake. These include the defence of freedom of expression for all, which remember not too long ago was a purportedly a priority of the left in the USA. This has now flipped into reverse, so that bullying and silencing have been converted into virtues in all spheres of corporate capitalism, state run bureaucracies and third sector organisations, in the name of immediate social progress. Because the left have sold their heads to wokery, being on the left and being a democratic socialist or an anarchist have become disconnected in practice. This is a depressing scenario especially in relation to gender politics, which is a black hole everyone is falling into, while genuine redistribution has been abandoned and the planet gets hotter and hotter. Nancy Fraser has been commenting on this scenario for over 20 years. More heat than light continues to grow in all senses of this term. My take on all this is offered in Identity Politics; Where Did It all Go Wrong? (Phoenix Books, 2022). See also I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It by Norman Finkelstein (Sublation Press, 2023) and The Politics of the Underclass by Loic Wacquant, especially his coda on race (Polity Press, 2023).
1. Respectfully, always wary of those who teach political science/history. Usually means not a historian.
2. Only the 1% could understand any of this, so how does this speak to or for the oppressed masses of the West/world any more than Woke elites do?
3. Agree fully with the critique of that Woke assumption of speaking for the oppressed. They are doing a terrible job from their 3-bedroom suburban homes, earning capitalist paychecks while parroting Marx, Fanon, Freire and Said.
(This is why we can’t trust the far Left.)
4. Mamdani does not ‘show’ anything about colonial identities. He makes up whatever suits him, like Said, Foucault, Fanon did, and 95% of leftist scholars do. Hows that Uganda working out for you Mahmood? Or India for that matter? He is making it all up, due to his Afrocentrism and idealization of Uganda, Rwanda and well everywhere in Africa. Life is good at Harvard though!! Historians of all stripes on the other hand know very well how collaborative, cemented AND fluid, neither this nor that, and how packed with agency were all those ‘colonial identities’ – whatever that might actually mean for hundreds of millions of separate individuals over centuries across the whole planet. Which colonial government ossified all that glorious arcadian pre European identity fluidity? Colonial govts all differed, from year to year, state to state, governor to governor. Generalization is pointless, about ethics, or profits, let alone personal identities. How au courant.
5. These ever increasing claims about present day colonial consequences are never based on clear historical causation. They are assumed or at best correlative. How do you even calculate what caused this or that today, here in the US, in Ireland, Botswana, Chile or China. Its impossible.
6. Criticizing the Enlightenment is like criticizing capitalism, ‘politicians’ or ones parents. Its banal. Without the Enlightenment, there would be no freedom for the likes of those noted above (and todays Woke scholars) to express their partially Marxist, utterly partisan, selfserving, mostly made-up viewpoints. (Except Foucault of course, privileged party boy who could say what he wanted and do what he wanted…) To anybody who comfortably, loudly, fearlessly critiques the Enlightenment from their cushioned couches, their joyful 9 month jobs and their well-filled bellies, I say: tell me all about the other traditions around the world in 1800. In fact why don’t you go to those places now. Then call us, if you can, when you get there, and let us know how Woke scholars in the West can claim the Enlightenment was somehow responsible for all the authoritarian cultures worldwide that long preceded its emergence in Europe, that thrived alongside it, that repudiated it consistently against the best advice of well-intentioned Europeans, that gained from many of its precepts - all those authoritarian cultures that are now more than ever now thriving worldwide in oppression, abuses, corruption and censorship - except for in, well, the region the Enlightenment originated. (The US as ever is a mixed bag….but)
7. The Enlightenment WAS mostly responsible for the Haitian Revolution. That’s clear. And Wilberforce. And Quakers. And of course many brave enslaved people. But, oh have you read what happened when the rebels were left to themselves? Interesting history there, but never noted normally. Division, fraction, black on black difference, regional rivalries, fissures from those with slave to middling to free status, across ideology, across class status, and so on. Why do I mention this? Because that is how, if we must generalize, essentially every indigenous kingdom was prior to the arrival of the vile Enlightenment minded white devils. Just like Europeans. They were all the same. They were all weird early modern humans, from Paris to Manila, to Paraguay to Mali . The noble savage idealization is so 1950s, but it persists. “They were oh so happy before…!!!” Right. Give me some Azteca sacrifice partying over a Bud light anytime.
8. The Enlightenment was certainly NOT responsible for Nazism. That was the epitome of anti-Enlightenment, rightwing conservative nationalism gone to hell and its extremes.
(This is why we can’t trust the far Right.)
9. Why would Diderot NOT be Eurocentric? In 1780? Was Al Wahabi Islamocentric? Was the Qing Emperor Sinocentric? The king of Kongo Afrocentric? The Shogun Japanocentric? Why do we expect SO much more of 18th century Europeans? Its not as if they were racially or intellectually superior or anything ridiculous like that…His Encyclopedie is actually very Woke for the time. And pretty much any elite from the non-West then would have praised its incredible depth of knowledge, if they could read.
10. Wokeness is worse than conservatism for free speech. Hurts me to say that, but its obvious.
11. Neiman is right. Otherwise this is very very impressive, really.
Thanks for this piece and the useful queries set out so clearly by Salim Lennox. The latter is correct to link the new authoritatrinism of wokery with the left (especially in the USA with its unending capacity to re-vamp inividualism and commodify it for profit) as well as to distrust the far right and point up that Nazism was not a product of the Enlightenment. None of us need to idealise the latter but we can defend some principles of universalism in its wake. These include the defence of freedom of expression for all, which remember not too long ago was a purportedly a priority of the left in the USA. This has now flipped into reverse, so that bullying and silencing have been converted into virtues in all spheres of corporate capitalism, state run bureaucracies and third sector organisations, in the name of immediate social progress. Because the left have sold their heads to wokery, being on the left and being a democratic socialist or an anarchist have become disconnected in practice. This is a depressing scenario especially in relation to gender politics, which is a black hole everyone is falling into, while genuine redistribution has been abandoned and the planet gets hotter and hotter. Nancy Fraser has been commenting on this scenario for over 20 years. More heat than light continues to grow in all senses of this term. My take on all this is offered in Identity Politics; Where Did It all Go Wrong? (Phoenix Books, 2022). See also I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It by Norman Finkelstein (Sublation Press, 2023) and The Politics of the Underclass by Loic Wacquant, especially his coda on race (Polity Press, 2023).