This essay considers W. E. B. Du Bois’s Darkwater as a window onto Du Bois’s political theory at an underexamined stage of his career and onto a challenge at the heart of black political thought: how to formulate a conception of collective life that regards the humanity of black women and men as a central concern. Exploring Du Bois’s attempt to articulate what can be seen through the lens of an avowedly “black” perspective and his creative juxtaposition of different modes (...) of writing, the author suggests why Darkwater remains a valuable resource for democratic theory in an age misleadingly described as “post-racial.”. (shrink)

The end of the twentieth century witnessed a resurgence of demands for reparations for slavery and segregation in the United States. At the same time, a chorus of prominent political theorists warned against the threat "identity politics" poses for democratic politics. This essay considers whether it is possible to construct an argument for reparations that responds to these concerns, particularly as they are articulated by Wendy Brown. To do so, I explore how Brown's analysis of the dangers of political organizing (...) around "wounded identities" and of appealing to the state for redress might inform and be informed by arguments for black reparations. (shrink)

In this essay, I contend that feminist theories of citizenship in the U.S. context must go beyond simply acknowledging the importance of race and grapple explicitly with the legacies of slavery. To sketch this case, I draw upon W.E.B. Du Bois's "The Damnation of Women," which explores the significance for all Americans of African American women's sexual, economic, and political lives under slavery and in its aftermath.

While most of Political Theory’s 50th anniversary issue looks forward to imagining political theory in the future, the Book Review section looks backward to consider those books and schools of political theory not reviewed on the pages of the journal—but which went on to shape the field nonetheless. The aim of this section is not to constitute a new and newly virtuous canon, but rather to goad readers to reflect anew on knowledge production and the institutional and circulatory practices that (...) compose it, reaching from journal readers, to classrooms and conferences, and on to late night conversations and confabulations. (shrink)

Massimiliano Tomba's Insurgent Universality is a stunning book. Conceptually, historically, and rhetorically innovative, it shows how popular challenges to conservative and liberal forms of state-centered politics outlive attempts to contain and repress them. Tomba's reading of revolutionary declarations and manifestos in France, Saint-Domingue, Russia, Mexico, and elsewhere recalls experimental democratic practices that can animate contemporary political thinking. After surveying some of Insurgent Universality's key contributions, I ask how Tomba's argument could be extended in relation to recent debates about the politics (...) of memory and consider what possibilities its anti-statism forecloses. Finally, I explore what gets lost in formulations of modernity that do not come to terms with racialized forms of bondage and dispossession and invite Tomba to speculate about how radical theories of politics might navigate between romantic figurations of democratic excess, on one hand, and a tragic preoccupation with aftermaths, on the other. (shrink)

In this essay, I contend that feminist theories of citizenship in the U.S. context must go beyond simply acknowledging the importance of race and grapple explicitly with the legacies of slavery. To sketch this case, I draw upon W.E.B. Du Bois's “The Damnation of Women,” which explores the significance for all Americans of African American women's sexual, economic, and political lives under slavery and in its aftermath.

In this essay, I contend that feminist theories of citizenship in the U.S. context must go beyond simply acknowledging the importance of race and grapple explicitly with the legacies of slavery. To sketch this case, I draw upon W.E.B. Du Bois's “The Damnation of Women,” which explores the significance for all Americans of African American women's sexual, economic, and political lives under slavery and in its aftermath.

Toni Morrison: Imagining Freedom explores Morrison’s reflections on the idea of freedom in her novels and nonfiction from the 1970s to 2019. While Morrison’s literary achievements are widely celebrated, her political thought has yet to receive its due. Morrison’s writing illuminates the meanings of freedom and unfreedom in a democratic society that was founded on both the defense of liberty and the right to enslave and dispossess. Toni Morrison: Imagining Freedom argues that Morrison’s fiction and her meditations on the power (...) of language contest the wishful thinking of color-blindness and repudiate complaints that it is time to get beyond race. Morrison’s attentiveness to the experiences of people “no one inquired of,” especially her interest in the lives of black women and girls, reorients democratic inquiry in the shadow of racial slavery, settler colonialism, and the ongoing processes of theft and domination they set in motion. Morrison’s writings, Balfour contends, kindle new practices of freedom-seeking that do not rely on the subjugation of others. (shrink)