,
7 tweets,
5 min read
Read on Twitter
On #epistemic violences and theorizing from the #GlobalSouth, think about how Alexis de Tocqueville, before becoming the father figure of democracy in the U.S. was a war-strategist for colonial #France in #Algeria. I'll throw in a few bonus quotes from his "Essay on #Algeria":
#Tocqueville wrote in 1841 "The most effective means we can use to subjugate the tribes is the interdiction of commerce” - speaking here about #Algerians around the Ottoman Empire's fall and the invasion of #France.
#TocquevilleOnAlgeria: “I believe that the right of war authorizes us to ravage the country and that we must do it, either by destroying harvests during the harvest season, or year-around by making those rapid incursions called razzes, whose purpose is to seize men or herds.”
#TocquevilleOnAlgeria “In the long run, what an Arab tribe find unbearable are not the occasional marches of a large army across their territory, but the proximity of a mobile force that may descend on them unpredictably and at any moment."
I wrote a paper on this in grad school exposing how each time there is an award related to the study of democracy that's named after Alexis de Tocqueville, there is a twin practice of celebrating violence against the "other" that goes along with it ...
Sure, Alexis de Tocqueville believed in #Democracy - but certainly had a limited (read racist) view on who deserved it or was enlightened enough to unlock it. #Fin - thank you for reading.
