Shane Moran - Alternation Journal

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LJ~zvld KLZZL~?~IUYI Racial Governmental~ty Thomas Jefferson and Afincnn Colonisatlon declaring their visual self-evidence: 'are ... to be distinctly kept in view', 'Under this view'. The self-evident rationality and modernity of colonisation thus depends on the declarative reiteration of its clarity or 'distinctness'. This rhetorical reiteration of colonisation's self-evidence turns the paradoxical conjunction of formal equality with control and regulation into a 'rational' formula for freedomin. This regulatory sentiment is echoed in a letter to Doctor Thomas Humphreys: I concur entlrely in your leadlng p~~nc~plcs of gradual emanclpat~on. of establishment on the coast of Afr~ca, and the pat~onage of out nat~on untll the ern~grants shall be able to protect theniselvcs (8 Febluary 1817) (Jefferson 1899 X 76Q Jefferson's vision of continuing regulation and control casts America's proposed 'gift' to African Americans as less an ethical and just act which expects no return, than an unequal exchange in which formal equality would be paid for in perpetuity by the maintenance of a system ofhierarchical racial and national particularity. Jefferson also represents this conjunction of formal equality with continuing regulation and control in economic terms. For example, in the letter to Rufus King mentioned above, from 13 July 1802, he writes: We might for this purpose [of paying for the colonisatioii of slaves from the U.S.], enter into negotiations with the natives, on some part of the coast, to obtain a settlement. and by establishing an African company. combine with it comn~ercial operations. which might not only reimburse expenses but procure profit also ... (Jefferson 1899.V111: 161f). Similarly, Jefferson writes to Monroe oil 2 June 1802, ... and if leave can be obtained to send black insurgents there, to inquire further whether the regulations of the place would permit us to carry or take there any mercantile objects which by affording some cornmercial profit, might defray the expenses of the transportation (Jefferson 1899.VIli: 153). ete, racialised populations. That is, when Jefferson argues that the U.S. must keep a hful political and economic eye over the new African American state, it seems that onisation must continue to work trans-Atlantically after deportatioll so that it can intain this calculable difference. Colonisation thus institutionalises its claim to mplete the emancipatory promise of the U.S. revolution in a continual, systematic, ans-Atlantic ritual of racialisation. This iterative and reiterative aspect of African Ionisation indicates again, as I mentioned earlier, that imperial U.S. citizenship does t demand the assimilation of difference to a homogeneous national norm, but rath pends on the active production of a particular kind of difference-the calculabl 1 difference of a population. Yet this reiterative aspect of colonisation als cates that imperial U.S. citizenship is not animated simply by the desire to ri erica ofracial others. Rather, African colonisation schemes precisely sought to keep ve the very racial distinction they calculated in the first place through post- portation surveillance and control. Colonisation's reiterative art of governrnentality ntinually conjoins the formal and abstract equality between populations with the ially andnationally codifiedparticularities ofthose populations. Thus, colonisation's governmentality consists not only in centralised power ntrol (buying slaves and land, deportation), but also, and more importantly for on, in a systematic, reiterative, decentralised, diffuse political reason, a ion of society whereby people would come to be understood as discrete, culable members of a racially and natio~lally codified population. In effect, ised African Americans are to be objects of an experiment in Enlightenment nmentality; they are to be rendered, represented, and maintained 'free' by the U.S. n Foucault (1980: 152) writes in The History ofSexzrality that I do not envisage a 'history of mentalitiest that would take account of bodies only through the manner in which they have been perceived and given meaning and value: but a 'history of bodies' and the manner in which what is most material and most vital in them has been invested, By bringing independent African Americans in Africa into the economic orbit of the U.S. as a peripheral nation-state, these continuing 'commercial operations' woul constmct and inaintain both a separation of Americans from Africans, and a continuin dependency of Africans on Americans. The fact that colonisation must coi~tinue beyond deportation, that it lnus proceed 'in such aslow degree' as he says in the 'Autobiography' passage, suggests that it not only produces and responds to, but also maintains the very terms of the crisis it re~resents. Colonisation cari be said to demand the ~terat~on and reiteration of the anner' of 'investment', in the case of colonisation, is this reiterative and ble political reason. In Jefferson, then, colonisation can be understood not as an ation of liberal principles of freedom, but rather as a liberal, governmental ulation of fonnal and abstract equality with racial codification by means of a welllated, diffuse, and responsibilised society. This results not in a w~thdrawing of rnment from civil society, but in a dispersion of governmentality across a society created by govern~nental political reason. When he writes in the 'Autobiography' c~lculable difference, the production and maintenance of a difference in kind, betwee Nothing is more cel.tainly witten in tile book offate tllan [hat [ou~.s!aves] are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races. equally fi-ec, cannot live in thc sarne government, " See also an 18 15 letter to David Barrow (Jefferson 1899.1X:S 15t). ggests that formally and abstractly, as population units, African Americans and
David Kastrnjrnn white Americans are equally free. White nationalist racism 'is no less certain', however, because the freedom of these population units is conditioned upon the production and maintenance of their 'indelible' racial codification and hierarchicalisation. Department of English State University Press. Queens College, CUNY Racial Governmentalit)). l'horncrs JeJeiaori L;I~L/ ,ffiic~rw ('c~lorzisc-[tion * I would like to thank Judith Butler, Catherine Bassard, Marianne Constable, David eenwood Press. Lloyd, 12red Moten, Carolyn Porter, and Maria Josefina Saldaiia for their invaluable Jacques 1983. The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of its Pupils. comments on, a11d dis~ussiol~s of, this article. Referexaces and Selected Bibliography ne AJi-icnrz lie~~osito~j und Colonial Joiolrrnal. Volun~es I-VI11. 1826- 1832. Washington: Wa) and Gideon Printers. Anonymous. 1532. Clairns ?ftile ..l,fricarz.s: or 7Y7e History of the Auner-icun Coloniznfion Socie Bosloll: Massaci~usetts Sabbath Scl~ool LJniori. .,jppleby. Joyce 1993. I:-itsoduction: Jeff'i-rso11 and llis Colnples I..cgacy. In J
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Page 26 and 27: David EiLzzcznjlaw Racial C;overrzn
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Page 70 and 71: Alex In Gzlrna i Polltics and Aesth
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Corinne Sandwith Two Women Critics
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Tilo Women Critics and South Africa
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nces and Selected Bibliography hori
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I'F~CI N~~~I.S~I~I~IL Constr~lction
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aised, the title of the essay, The
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value is socially constructed and d
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C'onstuzrct~ons of Protest Poetqj u
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Priya Narisrntll~l Cowstrnctions of
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and public accountability. Althougl
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epresentative ~nullicultural tlnive
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.Yh~zne MU~LZPJ Acnder~~ic I.l.tchn
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Africa. This partially accounts for
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wolnen' has cxetnplary status (llay
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Maqagi. Sisi 1990. Who Theorises? C
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The L)~viikiA Africtrrl Stc~t avid
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ion. Johannesburg: SATRK. This does
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Book Reviews States of Eniergency i
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Arrived after you had returned honi
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postinodernism: . . . what is post-
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Shane Moran - Alternation Journal

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