Settler Society, Global Empire: Aziz Rana and Nikhil Singh on the American State

Aziz Rana, who’s a professor of law at Cornell, is one of my favorite of the younger generation of political theorists who are transforming our understanding of some of the basic paradigms of political science. I discovered his work a few years ago, when I got a copy of his first book The Two Faces of Freedom. That book just came out in paperback. Since then, he’s been kind enough to share with me several chapters from his new project on a different tradition of American constitutionalism, one that we might call anti-constitutionalism or an alternative constitutionalism, that seeks to take down the text from its pedestal and put in its place, and that explores it came to its position atop that pedestal. He’s one of those theorists from whom, whatever he writes, I learn and come away with all sorts of new thoughts in my head.

In August, Jacobin published a really great interview with him, conducted by Nikhil Singh, about The Two Faces of Freedom. Some excerpts here; I urge you to buy the book.

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I argue that for all the basic transformations in the US in the twentieth century — from the rise of the administrative state to civil rights successes — the country’s internal institutions and external practices have retained settler structures. A key theme of my historical account involves the rejection of the idea that, even if settlerism oriented early American history, it has little to say about the present.

For many left-liberals, a common move is to recognize the country’s oppressive roots, but then to argue that through a combination of the New Deal in the 1930s and the so-called Second Reconstruction in the 1960s, the nation was in effect fundamentally transformed on free and equal grounds. So they reject a conservative reading of the founding as perfect and unmarred, but nonetheless participate in the overall creedal story of self-fulfillment and redemption.

My view, by contrast, is that creedal arguments gained prominence out of a sense of ideological uncertainty that enveloped the United States in the early twentieth century. In particular, the closing of the frontier and the country’s emergence onto the global stage with the Spanish American War raised basic questions about the future of colonial settlement as well as the meaning of American power in the world.

In this context, many American elites began to rally around a specific reading of American universalism as the defining characteristic of the community. This view separated European imperialism on the one hand from American global influence on the other, with the latter depicted as benign tutelage fundamentally in keeping with the basic interests of nonwhite peoples.

Such civic arguments steadily reimagined the country in more inclusive terms. But, critically, they also provided an ideological framework that allowed classically privileged American insiders to preserve the basic institutional structures of the polity — those of an increasingly completed settler project — while at the same time asserting greater authority internationally.

As a result, although the country’s identity shifted from a settler to a civic nation, the roots persisted — Americans never properly confronted the country’s colonial infrastructure or its imperial legacies.

Furthermore, all of this occurs in the context of an expansive bureaucratic state, a lasting institutional legacy of mid-twentieth century American political development. This administrative state is organized around an increasingly centralized presidential system and is both infused with corporate interests as well as insulated from mobilized popular pressure. I should note that I am avowedly statist in my politics; I believe strongly in the democratic potential of both the state and its bureaucratic infrastructure.

So the problem for me is not state power as such, but the corporatist mode of state power that dominates American politics. The rise of this particular form means that, paradoxically, just as marginalized communities in the past half century have gained formal rights and greater electoral power, the public’s overall capacity to direct large-scale economic and political institutions has seen a sharp decline.

The second type of pushback is that by describing the internal practice of self-rule within settler society as a rich account of freedom, I am, in effect, legitimating settler practices (the concern you highlight). I think this is a fair worry and one that I’ve struggled with.

My basic theoretical position is that freedom and subordination are inextricably connected to one another in any historical context. Moreover, groups understand the meaning of freedom in particular conditions in relation to those modes of oppression that are prevalent on the ground.

For me, the expansive notion of freedom as self-rule — as a condition of popular authority over economic and political life — which emerged in the United States in the nineteenth century, developed precisely out of close proximity to its living negations: slavery and native expropriation. Settler laborers in particular came to see freedom as more than just formal political and legal rights, but actual control over the conditions of production, economic independence, and democratic self-government. This was a robust vision, albeit deeply circumscribed given that the heart of settler ideology was that such freedom at root required native removal and exploited labor.

Thus, to universalize settler liberty — as I argue for in the book — would require a fundamental restructuring of American life. This is something radical critics themselves perceived at various moments in American history. It would mean thinking about how a democratic principle could actually govern all institutional sites and provide all communities with meaningful economic and political power.

Such an effort would transform, root and branch, settler legacies and living practices: from recognizing Indian sovereignty to fundamentally altering the structure of the economy to challenging the border as a closed barrier. The key thing to note is that such freedom, although emerging from a settler past, would no longer perpetuate settlerism.

This speaks to what I see as the dialectical character of freedom, where the conflict between an initial account of liberty and its opposition produces something new. And similarly, I would add that I do not believe that if we ever “universalized” settler freedom this would mean the end of subordination once and for all. Rather, in keeping with the dialectical vision, even successful projects of emancipation generate new legal and political orders that knit together secured liberties with emerging hierarchies.

First, a remarkable feature of US domestic conversations about capitalism and economic inequality is the extent to which they are often separated from conversations about the application of US power abroad. As just one example, take the issue of immigration and immigrant rights, a focal point of new labor organizing on the one hand and conservative reaction on the other.

The overwhelming tendency is to present immigration as an issue that begins at the national border, with virtually no attention paid to the particular histories, international economic pressures, and specific US foreign policy practices that generate migration patterns in the first place. The movement of men and women from their homes does not occur in a vacuum and is deeply tied to patterns of colonization and empire that stitch together the Global North and the Global South, as well as to the recent security politics of the US and Europe across the post-colonial world.

16 Comments

  1. wohlstet September 14, 2014 at 3:42 pm | #

    This is dead on. I think Emmanuel Todd suggested that a shared settler-ethos helped explain American sympathy for Israel. I also think A&N are right about the fate of democracy in the U.S. As it became more inclusive, its scope narrowed: it doesn’t extend to the economy, the fundamental law, or inside the work place. But doesn’t this finally come down to the innate conflict between liberalism and democracy? Can we pretend that this is a productive tension anymore–that we have a liberal democracy rather than undemocratic liberalism built on the judicialization of politics?

    • BillR September 14, 2014 at 5:07 pm | #

      The frequently cited Israeli historian Benny Morris is in no doubt on which side of “settlerism” he–and almost all other self-proclaimed Left/Liberal Israelis–falls on:

      He calls the conflict between Israelis and Arabs a struggle between civilization and barbarism, and suggests an analogy frequently drawn by Palestinians, though from the other side of the Winchester: “Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians.”

      Although, with election to Presidency of someone like Obama, perhaps a finer-grained schema has to be considered, one in which blacks–like Mizrahim in Israel–can gain a measure of acceptance if they “behave”, but those who refuse to accept universalization of “settler liberty” (not to mention grant it the sense of innocence craved by adherents of the ideology) will forever be consigned to status of what Netenyahu calls “human animals”:

      If the Palestinians figure in official Euro-Israeli discourse as the Indians, associated in colonial discourse with nomadism and savagery, Asian and African Israelis are, on some levels, the Blacks.

      • LFC September 17, 2014 at 12:27 am | #

        @BillR
        How do you know what side of “settlerism” all Left/Liberal Israelis fall on? Why do you assume they all agree w Morris?

  2. bor September 14, 2014 at 5:42 pm | #

    “Such an effort would transform, root and branch, settler legacies and living practices: from recognizing Indian sovereignty to fundamentally altering the structure of the economy to challenging the border as a closed barrier. The key thing to note is that such freedom, although emerging from a settler past, would no longer perpetuate settlerism.”

    Wow, up to this moment in my life I had no idea I was such a fan of “settlerism” or corporate America. I admit it, though, it seems that I am, despite many misgivings.

    This view may be partially explained by what followed:

    “I would add that I do not believe that if we ever “universalized” settler freedom this would mean the end of subordination once and for all. Rather, in keeping with the dialectical vision, even successful projects of emancipation generate new legal and political orders that knit together secured liberties with emerging hierarchies.”

    Great, so after we internalize how lousy we are, we should throw out the baby with the bathwater because of the system’s supposed inherent flaws. And then, once it’s destroyed, we will get to deal with an entire set of new problems because apparently that is the nature of societies. So, in effect, for example, we might replace Apple, Google, GE and Bank of America and their pernicious political influence and replace them with, say, weak government, borders, sense of our nation so that with a little bit of judiciously utilized violence, some strongman from a Mexican drug cartel can being to run our lives.

    And why should we take this risk? Well, to remove from ourselves that deeply-rooted “original sin” we all carry around because of what happened hundreds of years ago, even if a vast percentage of this country is comprised of immigrants and the children of immigrants who have arrived in just the past century and that enable their children to, for example, attend Yale and Harvard and become leading theorists.

    We actually have a little evidence of what would happen if Rana could see his theories become reality. In 2011, he co-wrote an article encouraging the USA to stop supporting its faux-moderate allies, specifically Mubarak, so that the region (in this case obviously Egypt) could allow its own people to govern themselves and to reach solutions for their society that come from within their society, as opposed to American influence (http://fpif.org/the_fake_moderation_of_americas_moderate_mideast_allies/). The article specifically mentions the Hamas victory in 2006 as an example of American meddling, by the way.

    Lo and behold, precisely as Rana recommended, the US pushed Mubarak out of the way and supported elections and even the Muslim Brotherhood. The outcome? Within less than two years we saw Millions and millions of Egyptians demonstrating that their needs were being ignored and democracy was being undermined. In parts of the country religious minorities such as the Copts suffered mightily in that period. When these people rose up again to protest the MB government, who saved them? The military, essentially by employing a great deal of violence. A new authoritarian ruler came into power and Egyptians are now stuck again in a situation where an election isn’t quite an election.

    Sometimes it’s better to just accept that we are a “settler” society born of “imperial” goals and thank goodness that despite our many flaws as a society, it remains one that may need changes and repairs, but minor ones. Please, just minor ones. Let’s all hope the young “political theorists” don’t go into politics.

    • Corey Robin September 14, 2014 at 6:49 pm | #

      Bor, if you want to rant on the Israel threads, that’s fine. Your rants and that country are made for each other. Aziz is a serious scholar; I’m not going to have you do that here. So, consider this your one warning. If you do it again, you’re banned.

      On Sun, Sep 14, 2014 at 5:42 PM, Corey Robin wrote:

      >

      • Bor September 14, 2014 at 7:44 pm | #

        That was a serious remark and it most certainly wasn’t a rant. I quoted Rana’s statements directly, so that there would be zero confusion and I provided a very specific example of real world outcomes of his theories on the basis of his article on Egypt and what we now know happened there subsequently.

        If you disagree, feel free to say why.

        If you think it’s stupid, say so and demonstrate why.

        If you don’t think I’m worth your time in either case, then why are you bothering with me? Do my ideas threaten you that much? Are Rana’s ideas so fragile that my apparently merit-less comments are so dangerous to his views?

        Ban me whenever you feel like it, I will continue to write what I think and continue to do so politely and within the context of the thread until you do. I believe in the free expression of ideas.

      • John Protevi September 15, 2014 at 10:46 am | #

        “I believe in the free expression of ideas.”

        Oh, please. You believe in taking advantage of the 5:1 ratio of refutation to claim, so that when you lay down 1K of subtle distortion, begged questions, cherrypicked evidence, innuendo, and so on, you’re counting on other people not wanting to reply at requisite length, so that you can do your little victory dance when they don’t. This tactic was old in Usenet days and hasn’t gotten any less transparent in the interim.

    • Sam September 15, 2014 at 11:33 am | #

      Rana: “I would add that I do not believe that if we ever “universalized” settler freedom this would mean the end of subordination once and for all. Rather, in keeping with the dialectical vision, even successful projects of emancipation generate new legal and political orders that knit together secured liberties with emerging hierarchies.”

      Bor: “Great, so after we internalize how lousy we are, we should throw out the baby with the bathwater because of the system’s supposed inherent flaws. And then, once it’s destroyed, we will get to deal with an entire set of new problems because apparently that is the nature of societies. So, in effect, for example, we might replace Apple, Google, GE and Bank of America and their pernicious political influence and replace them with, say, weak government, borders, sense of our nation so that with a little bit of judiciously utilized violence, some strongman from a Mexican drug cartel can being to run our lives.”

      I think you’ve badly misread what Rana was saying here. He was simply trying to avoid the trap of apocalypticism, promising utopia or a new world. It’s actually rather pragmatic and respectable. He’s saying: We can do a lot better than we are doing now if we “universalize settler freedom.” We can predict lots of those ways and describe how they would be better. But we CAN’T say that this would mark the end of oppression and injustice on earth, because we can’t imagine or predict the new types of problems that would arise.

      If you deny that this is reasonable, it seems that you basically have to deny the reasonableness of ever attempting to solve any problem.

    • J Thomas September 15, 2014 at 11:36 am | #

      “Lo and behold, precisely as Rana recommended, the US pushed Mubarak out of the way and supported elections and even the Muslim Brotherhood. The outcome? Within less than two years we saw Millions and millions of Egyptians demonstrating that their needs were being ignored and democracy was being undermined. In parts of the country religious minorities such as the Copts suffered mightily in that period. When these people rose up again to protest the MB government, who saved them? The military, essentially by employing a great deal of violence. A new authoritarian ruler came into power and Egyptians are now stuck again in a situation where an election isn’t quite an election.”

      That isn’t so far from US history. We had two highly polar groups contest for the nation, and there were attempts at suppression (The Alien and Sedition Act etc). But we didn’t have a strong military to save us, and eventually we settled down.

      So, do you particularly believe the military government protects the Copts efficiently? I don’t, they are only extra-good at persecuting MB.

      You think the miliary “saved” the people who took to the streets? But by doing that they showed that MB could not govern. It’s what they do when they don’t have working elections. By preventing democracy, what did the military save?

      Oh well. Not unlikely within 20 years or so the Israeli military will “save” Israel’s government the same way, and we can all give thanks.

  3. Mike Donnel September 14, 2014 at 9:35 pm | #

    I just don’t buy the line that “Americans have never grappled with the countries imperial legacies”. What does he mean by Americans, and what does he mean by grapple? As a historical fact, there have been Americans grappling with these questions since the nation began, and some of these Americans have been very prominent indeed.

    Again, when he talks of “classically privileged American insiders”, who retained their privileges throughout the process of increasing democratization, and who are, apparently, the personal manifestations of America’s settler traditions, who does he mean? East coast WASPS sending their progeny to Yale for the nth generation? The planter class and their southern descendants? The industrial titans? The financial wizards of JP Morgan?

    For what it’s worth, I think the discussion of the development of American civic culture at the turn of the 19th century given in What Hath God Wrought is extremely compelling, and has very much to do with settler practices. But I think what would give that author an advantage over a more abstract theoretician like Aziz is his close proximity to the historical material, which more finely draws out the nuances of the thought and practice of that time, and how it differs today to our own popular conceptions of political autonomy.

    • Corey Robin September 14, 2014 at 9:46 pm | #

      “what would give that author an advantage over a more abstract theoretician like Aziz is his close proximity to the historical material…”

      Have you actually read Aziz’s book? Perhaps you should before you make such a claim.

      On Sun, Sep 14, 2014 at 9:35 PM, Corey Robin wrote:

      >

  4. BillR September 14, 2014 at 10:03 pm | #

    David Roediger’s Working Toward Whiteness also shines light on the murky past of “white ethnics” who were once in racial limbo-land–having skin as white as Scandinavians did not count; “race, color, and creed” denoted 3 discrete categories–until they bought into New World shibboleths of “settler liberty”. He describes the process of becoming white for Polish-Americans, Italian-Americans, etc. as akin to “joining a Polical Party”:

    http://will.illinois.edu/mediamatters/show/july-24-2005/

  5. jonst September 15, 2014 at 9:02 am | #

    wow… you are getting a bit touchy Corey.

  6. G. Branden Robinson September 18, 2014 at 2:12 am | #

    Sam wrote:

    ‘If you deny that this is reasonable, it seems that you basically have to deny the reasonableness of ever attempting to solve any problem.”

    That sounds like a darn good capsule of conservative thought right there.

  7. BillR December 7, 2014 at 10:06 am | #

    There’s lots of great movies that came in the 60s and 70s from those Europeans who were young (or born) in the 40s but who later confronted their parents’ generation about their role during the decades of the “brown plague”. Many of them were sexual outcasts as well such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Satan’s Brew) and Pier Paolo Pasolini (Salo). Bernardo Bertolucci’s Conformist falls in the same category. They had first-hand understanding of what Fascism was and that knowledge is being lost as their generations ebb away.

    Entire generations were defined by their take on the Fascism vs. Democracy debate. There weren’t many in the parents’ generation on the Continent who came out of that era with their honor intact. One who did was Sandro Pertini who could actually claim to be a member of the resistance (whose numbers were mysteriously inflated after 1945) and the distinction he draws can be followed almost based on body language alone:

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