Hegel and Empire by M.A.R. Habib

Author:M.A.R. Habib
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

For Hegel, the Other cannot be allowed to exist in isolation and immediacy, in what Marcuse termed its “dead objectivity”15; it must be overcome, and assimilated into oneself, whether that self is a rational individual or a continent of individuals in the rational collective subjectivity known as “Europe .” In this scheme, certain constituencies—for example, Africa and woman—are eternally aligned with the status of immediacy, of corporeality, serving as the Other, as that which must be sublated or superseded in order for self-identity—of Europe , of the male—to be realized.

Though he himself does not pursue it, Russell Berman offers the valuable suggestion that colonial discourse implicates epistemological questions concerning the construction of time and space.16 Without going too deeply into Hegel’s conceptions of space and time as formulated in his philosophy of nature, we can indicate briefly that he sees space and time as integral to the reality of any given object or phenomenon. In other words, we can’t abstract an object from its spatio-temporal context; there is no “empty” space or time into which matter is somehow inserted (Enc, II, §254, Zus). Nor can particular portions of time or space be abstracted from the continuity of which they are part. What this means is that all objects, all phenomena, are always intrinsically related not only to other objects and phenomena but to aspects of themselves. No phenomenon—however large or small—possesses its true reality at any one moment in time or at any given point in space. Its reality consists in the fullness of its relations, in its own passage into a more complete expression of itself, a realization of its potential (Enc, I, §146, Zus). These insights are also underlain by Hegel’s views on identity and difference. The identity of any given phenomenon must pass through various differences in itself, and is intrinsically temporal, its relations to itself and other phenomena extending through both the flow of time and the extension of space. Moreover, in Hegel’s philosophy, time itself is the deepest reality: it is the heart of the dialectic, its moving pulse: every phenomenon is essentially comprised by process and by progress (Enc, II, §258, Rem & Zus). Its very essence is dynamic, and it must proceed through its own inner contradictions in order to become itself.17

Against the background of these insights, we can also argue that Hegel’s treatment of Africa violates the most basic, foundational principles of his philosophy. The idea that “Africa ” could somehow have a fixed or simple identity is, by those very principles, incoherent. Equally incoherent is the idea that it could remain fixed at any given point in its development; and even more incoherent is the fact that it is denied the very possibility of development. Not only this, but it is marooned and isolated within unrelatability, frozen in the mode of immediacy.

Nonetheless, Hegel undertakes a “colonial” strategy of constructing an alternative fiction of space and time on ideological grounds, of superimposing this ideological conception upon his considered epistemological views of space-time,

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