Exams

1. Exams • Comments • A couple more remarks on property • Some thoughts on universality

2. Reports • Sarah Burpo • Sarah Spurgeon

3. The Right of Self-Determination • E. Roosevelt • Covenants • Gandhi • Fanon

4. Eleanor Roosevelt • P. 284-87 • What does it mean for a people to determine its own destiny? • What is a people? • 286—self-determination as a process • What is needed in addition to a vote?

5. Readings • Many of the readings in this section may help your project. Just because we do not focus on them in class does not mean you should not think about them. • Be sure you look at the documents that are covenants and relate to national identity.

6. Philosophical Responses to Colonialism • General Introduction—Culture as Contested • The Example of India • Rammohan Roy (1772/74 – 1833)The founding of the Brahmo Samaj • Mohandas Gandhi, 1869-1948 • Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, 1888-1975 • The Example of Algeria • Frantz Fanon, 1925-1961 • Some Concluding Points

7. General Introduction • How is it possible to maintain and shape individual, cultural, and national identity within, and out of, a context of colonialism? • How does philosophical thought help address this question? • What means are appropriate, or needed, for furthering human flourishing?

8. General Introduction • What can the pre-colonial native culture contribute? • What might the colonial culture contribute to its own dismantlement? • What is the role of national identity and consciousness • To what extent is international recognition part of the process?

9. The Example of India • Historical Situation • Consolidation of British Rule • Hindu social system • A class of Indians educated by the British Sepoy Rebellion or Mutiny, 1857

10. Rammohan Roy (1772/74 – 1833) • Interface with England and the West • Anointed Raja by the Mughal Emperor • Sent to England as special envoy of the Mughal Emperor

11. The Founding of the Brahmo Samaj • Religious reform and universal religion • Breaking the barriers of gender inequality, role in the abolition of Sati • Advocacy of modernization, science education, and the reflective life • Cooperation between nations, and early ideas about League of Nations • Influence on major Western thinkers- Jeremy Bentham, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau

12. Mohandas K. Gandhi, 1869-1948

13. Mohandas K. Gandhi • Return to India in 1914 • Rowlatt Bills, 1919 • Incarceration of “dangerous persons” without trial or legal representation • Call for the April 6 hartal

14. Mohandas K. Gandhi • Satyagraha • The “weapon” required by India’s civilization, a higher weapon • A pledge to “faithfully follow truth and refrain from violence to life, person, or property” required from each in order to carry out a national campaign • Very simple, available to all • Holding to the truth, so truth-force or soul-force • Vindication of truth by taking the suffering on oneself

15. Mohandas K. Gandhi • The means and the end (or goal) are not separate • The example of the watch

16. Mohandas K. Gandhi • National Independence • National Congress Party, December 1928 • Gandhi’s statement in January 1930 • “The British government in India has not only deprived the Indian people of their freedom but has based itself on the exploitation of the masses and has ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually….therefore…India must sever the British connection and attain Purna Swaraj or complete independence.” • Satyagraha as the means to independence and so to self-determination.

17. The Example of Algeria French School in Algeria

18. The Example of Algeria • Historical Situation • Autonomous province of the Ottoman Empire with powerful claims to the Mediterranean Sea • French invade in 1830 • Abd al-Qadir and the guerilla war • French consolidation of rule • National Liberation Front (FLN), 1954

19. Frantz Fanon, 1925-1961

20. Frantz Fanon • Born in Martinique • Served with the Free French forces and fought in Europe • Studied medicine and psychiatry in Paris and Lyons • 1952 goes to Algeria to practice psychiatry, marries and remains • Works with the FLN and edits ElMoudjahid

21. Frantz Fanon • Black Skin, White Masks, 1952 • Impact on civil rights, anti-colonialist, and black consciousness movements around the world • Imposition of false and degrading identity by demanding conformity to the colonialist values

22. Frantz Fanon • Position on violence • A cleansing force that frees the colonized from an inferiority complex and from despair and inaction • Makes one fearless • Restores self-respect • Yet, violence is not sufficient

23. Frantz Fanon “The nation is not only the conditions of culture, its fruitfulness, its continuous renewal, and its deepening. It is also a necessity. It is the fight for national existence which sets culture moving and opens to it the doors of creation. Later on it is the nation which will ensure the conditions and framework necessary to culture. …In the same way it is its national character that will make such a culture open to other cultures and which will enable it to influence and permeate other cultures.”

24. Frantz Fanon • The dialectical relationship of conflict and culture • Emaciation of culture under colonial domination • Open and organized revolt creates a tension that is also creative • Literature of protest and lament • Literature that speaks to the national people and becomes part of the action awakening national consciousness

25. Frantz Fanon • The disappearance of the colonized and national consciousness as the beginning of a new humanism • National consciousness opens communication • “National liberation…leads the nation to play its part on the stage of history.”

26. Gandhi and Fanon • Both influence US civil rights • Can national identity be formed by violence? If it is, is that identity bound to violence?

27. Right of self-determination • Where do we see the claim for this right at work today?