Event Title
Empire All the Way Down: Thinking America Through Edward Said
Description
This talk engages the concept of “imperial blowback,” the idea that great imperial powers eventually experience at home the same kinds of racist, authoritarian violence they use to conquer and contain peoples in the colonized world. The first half of the presentation both agrees with, and expands upon this idea, arguing that its most vocal proponent, Hannah Arendt, correctly linked empire to the rise of totalitarianism in Europe but wrongly concluded that imperialism was “the one great crime in which America was never involved.” The second half of the talk explores Edward Said’s notion of “counterpoint” as an alternative to “blowback’ and suggests that it both engages American imperial violence, draws upon the enduring intellectual and political resources generated through anti-colonial resistances in the Global South and North, and provides us with a humanist vision of the future that opens our horizons to a more expansively just politics.
About the Lecturer: Jeanne Morefield is Professor of Politics at Whitman College and a Professorial Fellow at Australian Catholic University whose work engages the historical and contemporary intersection of political theory and international relations with a particular focus on British and American imperialism. Her books include Empires Without Imperialism: Anglo-American Decline and the Politics of Deflection (Oxford, 2014) and Covenants Without Swords: Idealist Liberalism and the Spirit of Empire (Princeton, 2005). She has published articles in Political Theory, History of Political Thought, Theory and Event, and other journals as well as numerous chapters for edited volumes on the history of international and imperial thought. She is engaged in a long-term project on the historiography of human trafficking and is writing a book, Empire as Method: Edward Said and Political Theory. Jeanne is currently Co-President of the Association for Political Theory.
Document Type
Event
Start Date
24-1-2018 4:30 PM
End Date
24-1-2018 5:50 PM
Location
Fairhaven College Auditorium
Resource Type
Moving image
Title of Series
World Issues Forum
Genre/Form
lectures
Contributing Repository
Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies
Subjects – Topical (LCSH)
Imperialism; Totalitarianism; Political ethiccs; Hierarchies; State-sponsored terrorism; Political atrocities; Internationalism
Subjects – Names (LCNAF)
Said, Edward W.
Geographic Coverage
United States--Territories and possessions; United States--Insular possessions
Type
Moving image
Keywords
Political theory, Imperial blowback
Rights
This resource is displayed for educational purposes only and may be subject to U.S. and international copyright laws.
Language
English
Format
video/mp4
Empire All the Way Down: Thinking America Through Edward Said
Fairhaven College Auditorium
This talk engages the concept of “imperial blowback,” the idea that great imperial powers eventually experience at home the same kinds of racist, authoritarian violence they use to conquer and contain peoples in the colonized world. The first half of the presentation both agrees with, and expands upon this idea, arguing that its most vocal proponent, Hannah Arendt, correctly linked empire to the rise of totalitarianism in Europe but wrongly concluded that imperialism was “the one great crime in which America was never involved.” The second half of the talk explores Edward Said’s notion of “counterpoint” as an alternative to “blowback’ and suggests that it both engages American imperial violence, draws upon the enduring intellectual and political resources generated through anti-colonial resistances in the Global South and North, and provides us with a humanist vision of the future that opens our horizons to a more expansively just politics.
About the Lecturer: Jeanne Morefield is Professor of Politics at Whitman College and a Professorial Fellow at Australian Catholic University whose work engages the historical and contemporary intersection of political theory and international relations with a particular focus on British and American imperialism. Her books include Empires Without Imperialism: Anglo-American Decline and the Politics of Deflection (Oxford, 2014) and Covenants Without Swords: Idealist Liberalism and the Spirit of Empire (Princeton, 2005). She has published articles in Political Theory, History of Political Thought, Theory and Event, and other journals as well as numerous chapters for edited volumes on the history of international and imperial thought. She is engaged in a long-term project on the historiography of human trafficking and is writing a book, Empire as Method: Edward Said and Political Theory. Jeanne is currently Co-President of the Association for Political Theory.
