Self-and-Other Determination and the Invention of Whiteness: A Comment on Democracy and Empire
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Democracy and Empire: Labor, Nature, and the Reproduction of Capitalism makes an important and timely contribution to democratic theory and debates about racial capitalism.Valdez retheorizes popular sovereignty and democratic self-determination by attending to their entanglements with imperial histories and racial capitalism (Valdez, 2023, 7).She argues that Western democracies have, historically, laid claim to an "excessive form of […] self-determination" by demanding to rule not only themselves but also to govern, exploit, and expropriate racialized others (ibid., 23).Valdez coins the term self-and-other determination for this claim to self-rule that depends on appropriating the land, resources, and labor of racialized others.As Valdez puts it, "popular sovereignty and self-determination are underpinned by popular claims that demand[..] collective access to wealth obtained by imperial means" (ibid., 2).Valdez's concept of self-and-other determination draws explicitly on Du Bois' concept of democratic despotism.In his analyses of the origins of the first world war, Du Bois developed critique of the class compromise between capital and the white working class in Europe and North America (Du Bois, 2022 [1915], 26-27; cf.2022, 42 [1917]; 1933).Du Bois argued that the 'white' working class had struck a tragic bargain with capital to ensure access to the spoils of an imperialist world order.Valdez reconstructs and builds on Du Bois' theorization of "democratic despotism as a proper type of political regime […] which depends on a collective attachment to the wealth extracted through imperial rule" (ibid., 34).Valdez argues that the rightward trend that we are currently witnessing in the US, the UK, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, France, and Italy, to mention but a few must be understood in the context of a colonial and imperial history that has shaped the political expectations and affective attachments of citizens in Western democracies (ibid.54-60). 1 Katzenstein: Self-and-Other Determination and the Invention of Whiteness: A Co Published by Scholars Junction, She argues that recent political trends indicate that western publics continue to feel entitled to appropriate the resources from former colonies and rule over racialized others.The contemporary rise of the extreme right wing and the turn to nationalism on the left, she argues, should be understood as issuing a "historically intelligible call for a white democracy" (ibid., 2) and laying claim to mitigating the "effects of capitalism over themselves, while reinforcing hierarchies to delimit the reach of any gains attained" (ibid., 5).Valdez's concept of self-and-other determination and her historical account of imperial popular sovereignty provides a framework for understanding not only the rise of the extreme and fascistic right but also the right-ward drift of many left-wing and social democratic parties in Europe.In Germany, for example, the newly founded Bündniss Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), which emerged as the third strongest party in regional elections in Thuringia, Saxony, and Brandenburg in 2024, combines calls for more social equality and a fairer distribution of wealth with demands for restrictive immigration policies and a skeptical attitude towards multi-culturalism.It casts immigrants as competitors for jobs, housing, and social services and posits a general conflict of interest between immigrants and Germans who are less well off.(BSW, 2024). 1 The 1 Wagenknecht's political development over the last decades is particularly interesting.Over the last two decades, Wagenknecht has attempted to develop what she sees as a populist left-wing, developing both a unique orientation in terms of economic policy (a kind of left-wing ordoliberalism), and, increasingly distancing herself from cosmopolitan and border-critical committments in Die Linke, in favor of a nationalist vision of fair distribution of wealth.For an analysis of Wagenknecht's turn to ordoliberalism, see Callison &
Source: Emancipations
Author: Emily Katzenstein
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4409995298