{"title":"The Myth of Westphalian Common Sense: Abjuration and Republicanism in Quilombos's Palmares","authors":"S. Grovogui","doi":"10.1215/00382876-11235631","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The essay addresses a concern that significant dimensions of the consciousness and language associated with modern revolutions have gone missing from discussions related to agency. It centers on Quilombos, who in the early seventeenth century created Palmares as a unique constitutional experiment and yet have been excluded from disciplinary common sense in political and international theories on the matters of modern consciousness, constitutionalism, and republicanism. The essay revisit questions of world-historical events that cast Africans as outside of time. The author counters disciplinary common sense by revisiting the moral statuses of modern political apologias, which are associated with the will to independence, and abjurations, taken to be formative expressions of self-determination. Both modern apologias and abjurations are taken to be the point of origination of modern consciousness associated with the birth of modern republicanism. Quilombo revolution demonstrates that political rationality, which underpins political action, is an expression of cognitive, material, and symbolic conditions due to time. The associated consciousness and actions may simultaneously take place across multiple spaces. This is to say that the expression of political subjectivity, which is a matter of consciousness and language, may in time be more widespread than parochial or national histories suggest. The Dutch and Quilombos revolutions prove this point.","PeriodicalId":21946,"journal":{"name":"South Atlantic Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"South Atlantic Quarterly","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-11235631","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CULTURAL STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The essay addresses a concern that significant dimensions of the consciousness and language associated with modern revolutions have gone missing from discussions related to agency. It centers on Quilombos, who in the early seventeenth century created Palmares as a unique constitutional experiment and yet have been excluded from disciplinary common sense in political and international theories on the matters of modern consciousness, constitutionalism, and republicanism. The essay revisit questions of world-historical events that cast Africans as outside of time. The author counters disciplinary common sense by revisiting the moral statuses of modern political apologias, which are associated with the will to independence, and abjurations, taken to be formative expressions of self-determination. Both modern apologias and abjurations are taken to be the point of origination of modern consciousness associated with the birth of modern republicanism. Quilombo revolution demonstrates that political rationality, which underpins political action, is an expression of cognitive, material, and symbolic conditions due to time. The associated consciousness and actions may simultaneously take place across multiple spaces. This is to say that the expression of political subjectivity, which is a matter of consciousness and language, may in time be more widespread than parochial or national histories suggest. The Dutch and Quilombos revolutions prove this point.
期刊介绍:
Individual subscribers and institutions with electronic access can view issues of the South Atlantic Quarterly online. If you have not signed up, review the first-time access instructions. Founded amid controversy in 1901, the South Atlantic Quarterly continues to cover the beat, center and fringe, with bold analyses of the current scene—national, cultural, intellectual—worldwide. Now published exclusively in special issues, this vanguard centenarian journal is tackling embattled states, evaluating postmodernity"s influential writers and intellectuals, and examining a wide range of cultural phenomena.