Toward the Geopolitical Novel by Caren Irr

Author:Caren Irr [Irr, Caren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

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IDEOLOGY, TERROR, AND APOCALYPSE

The New Novel of Revolution

Only armed prophets succeed in bringing lasting change.

Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

It is through revolt that subjectivity (not of great men but of whomever) introduces itself into history and gives it the breath of life.

Michel Foucault, “Useless to Revolt?”

IN 1989, as the Soviet Union and its satellites began to unravel, Francis Fukuyama, a former Reagan and Bush–era State Department official, launched his “end of history” thesis. Fukuyama’s triumphalist argument asserted that history as defined by ideologically charged struggle had come to a close. All remaining political rebellions, Fukuyama predicted, would involve struggles for recognition within (but not against) American- or European-style liberal democracy, since “the ideal of liberal democracy could not be improved on.”1

In the more than two decades since the book version of The End of History was published, however, Fukuyama has reconsidered his position. Recognizing that revolution as a practice and an ideal has actually made something of a comeback in the twenty-first century, America at the Crossroads criticizes the anti-democratic and anti-revolutionary aspects of American foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Fukuyama’s most recent book, The Origins of Political Power, emphasizes the geopolitical role played by right-wing revolutionary movements, as well as the impact of states with a revolutionary pedigree, such as China.2 A universal and peaceful embrace of liberal democracy—the process that Fukuyama calls “getting to Denmark”—appears far more conflicted, violent, and unlikely at the start of the second decade of the twenty-first century than it did (at least to Fukuyama) in the latter decades of the twentieth. One of the hardest cases for the end of history thesis has been the Arab Spring.

Described by some hopeful observers as secular and pro-democracy uprisings against decades of one-party nationalist dictatorships in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Syria, and Libya, the movements that are collectively known as the Arab Spring also pay tribute to the Islamic revolution in Iran and reflect on the neocolonial influence exercised by Western powers.3 They have mobilized supporters across the political spectrum, and it remains to be seen who the beneficiaries of political upheaval in the region will be and what kind of social transformation, if any, will follow the ousting of aged leaders. Women’s rights, for example, remain a subject of dispute. Social modernization and so-called liberalization are in no way guaranteed by the moments of ecstatic rupture that Michel Foucault, among others, associates with a revolutionary confrontation with entrenched state power.4 Dramatic street protests and other spontaneous rebellions launched by coalitions unified only by their opposition to existing rulers create openings into which a great many possibly irreconcilable forces may rush.

Existing political theories do not provide complete explanations for these events. For classical liberalism, the main event that legitimates revolution is a sovereign’s assault on the citizen’s property.5 However, property rights have not been major slogans in the Arab Spring or other contemporary anti-state movements (such as the struggles in Burma and Tibet). Other civil rights, such as the right to participate in the political process,

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