Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-05T00:21:34.103Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Universal Suffrage as Decolonization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2021

KEVIN DUONG Open the ORCID record for KEVIN DUONG [Opens in a new window]
KEVIN DUONG*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
*
Kevin Duong, Assistant Professor, Department of Politics, University of Virginia, [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay reconstructs an important but forgotten dream of twentieth-century political thought: universal suffrage as decolonization. The dream emerged from efforts by Black Atlantic radicals to conscript universal suffrage into wider movements for racial self-expression and cultural revolution. Its proponents believed a mass franchise could enunciate the voice of colonial peoples inside imperial institutions and transform the global order. Recuperating this insurrectionary conception of the ballot reveals how radicals plotted universal suffrage and decolonization as a single historical process. It also places decolonization’s fate in a surprising light: it may have been the century’s greatest act of disenfranchisement. As dependent territories became nation-states, they lost their voice in metropolitan assemblies whose affairs affected them long after independence.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 115 , Issue 2 , May 2021 , pp. 412 - 428
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Special thanks are owed to Jeannette Estruth and Jennie Ikuta for their early abundant feedback. For their help, I also thank Nolan Bennett, Andrew Dilts, Laura Ford, Sina Jo, Chris McIntosh, Alys Moody, Duff Morton, David Kettler, Éric Trudel, the History of Capitalism group at Bard College, participants of the Association for Political Theory meeting in 2019, and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.

References

Accetti, Carlo Invernizzi. 2019. What is Christian Democracy? Politics, Religion, and Ideology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adelman, Jeremy. 2008. “An Age of Imperial Revolutions.” American Historical Review 113 (2): 319–340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Althusser, Louis. 1969. “Freud and Lacan.” New Left Review I (55): 51–65.Google Scholar
Baldwin, James. 1998. Collected Essays, ed. Morrison, Toni. New York: Library of America.Google Scholar
Bateman, David A. 2018. Disenfranchising Democracy: Constructing the Electorate in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beckman, Ludvig. 2008. “Who Should Vote? Conceptualizing Universal Suffrage in Studies of Democracy.” Democratisation 15 (1): 29–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benitez, Helena. 1999. Wifredo and Helena: My Life with Wifredo Lam, 1939-1950. Lausanne: Acatos.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. [1955] 2007. “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” In Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Arendt, Hannah, trans. Zohn, Harry, 253–64. New York: Schocken Books.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. [1963] 1998. The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. Osborne, John. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Bidault, Georges. [1965] 1967. Resistance: The Political Autobiography of Georges Bidault, trans. Sinclair, Marianne. New York: Frederick A. Praeger.Google Scholar
Breton, André. [1924] 1972. “Manifesto of Surrealism.” In Manifestoes of Surrealism, trans. Seaver, Richard and Lane, Helen R., 3–47. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Breton, André. [1972] 2008. Martinique: Snake Charmer, trans. Seaman, Davis W.. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Buddan, Robert. 2004. “Universal Adult Suffrage in Jamaica and the Caribbean Since 1944.” Social and Economic Studies 53 (4): 135–162.Google Scholar
Buck-Morss, Susan. 1995. “The City as Dreamworld and Catastrophe.” October 73: 3–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Césaire, Aimé. [1941] 1978a. “Présentation.” In Tropiques, Tome 1, 5–6. Paris: Éditions Jean-Michel Place.Google Scholar
Césaire, Aimé. [1941] 1978b. “Introduction à la poésie Nègre Américaine.” In Tropiques, Tome 1, 37–42. Paris: Éditions Jean-Michel Place.Google Scholar
Césaire, Aimé. [1945] 1978. “Poésie et connaissance.” In Tropiques, Tome 2, 157–70. Paris: Éditions Jean-Michel Place.Google Scholar
Césaire, Aimé. 1946. “Speech to the Constituent National Assembly, 12 March 1946.” In Annales de l’Assemblée Nationale Constituante. Débats, Volume III: du 12 au 30 Mars 1946, 659–62. Paris: Imprimerie des Journaux Officiels.Google Scholar
Césaire, Aimé. [1947] 2013. “Speech to the National Assembly, 10 July 1947.” In Aimé Césaire. Écrits politiques. Discours à l’Assemblée nationale, 1945–1983, 48–50. Paris: Jean-Michel Place.Google Scholar
Césaire, Aimé. [1949] 2013. “Speech to the National Assembly, 11 July 1949.” In Aimé Césaire. Écrits politiques. Discours à l’Assemblée nationale, 1945-1983, 61–66. Paris: Jean-Michel Place.Google Scholar
Césaire, Aimé. [1950] 2001. Discourse on Colonialism, trans. Pinkham, Joan. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Césaire, Aimé. 1956. “Culture and Colonisation.” Présence Africaine (June–November): 193–207.Google Scholar
Césaire, Suzanne. [1942] 1978. “Malaise d’une civilisation.” In Tropiques, Tome 1, 43–49. Paris: Éditions Jean-Michel Place.Google Scholar
Césaire, Suzanne. [1943] 1978. “1943: Le surréalisme et nous.” In Tropiques, Tome 2, 14–18. Paris: Éditions Jean-Michel Place.Google Scholar
Chapman, Herrick. 2018. France’s Long Reconstruction: In Search of the Modern Republic. Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chappel, James. 2018. Catholic Modern: The Challenge of Totalitarianism and the Remaking of the Church. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ciepley, David. 2007. Liberalism in the Shadow of Totalitarianism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick. 2008. “Possibility and Constraint: African Independence in Historical Perspective.” The Journal of African History 49 (2): 167–196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, Frederick. 2014. Citizenship between Empire and Nation: Remaking France and French Africa, 1945–1960. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick. 2018. “Federation, Confederation, Territorial State: Debating a Postimperial Future in French West Africa, 1945-1960.” In Forms of Pluralism and Democratic Constitutionalism, eds. Arato, Andrew and Cohen, Jean, 33–51. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conklin, Alice. L. 2013. The Museum of Man: Race, Anthropology and Empire in France, 1850–1950. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cruse, Harold. 1968. “Revolutionary Nationalism and the Afro-American.” In Rebellion or Revolution?, 73–91. New York: William Morrow & Co.Google Scholar
Dalton, Karen C. C., and Gates, Henry Louis Jr. 1998. “Josephine Baker and Paul Colin: African American Dance Seen Through Parisian Eyes.” Critical Inquiry 24(4): 903–34.Google Scholar
Daniels, Gilda R. 2020. Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America. New York: NYU Press.Google Scholar
David, Catherine, ed. [2015] 2016. The EY Exhibition: Wifredo Lam. London: Tate.Google Scholar
De Gaulle, Charles. 1940. “Manifeste de Brazzaville” (October 27, 1940). http://www.charles-de-gaulle.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Manifeste-de-Brazzaville.pdf.Google Scholar
De Gaulle, Charles. 1944. “Discours de Brazzaville” (January 30, 1944). http://www.charles-de-gaulle.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Discours-de-Brazzaville.pdf.Google Scholar
Delavignette, Robert. 1945. “L’Union Française. A l’échelle du Monde, A la mesure de l’Homme.” Esprit (July): 214–236.Google Scholar
Depestre, René. [1967] 2001. “An Interview with Aimé Césaire.” In Césaire, Aimé, Discourse on Colonialism, trans. Pinkham, Joan, 81–94. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Dennie, Nneka D. 2020. “Black Male Feminism and the Evolution of Du Boisian Thought, 1903-1920.” Palimpsest 9 (1): 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diagne, Souleymane Bachir. 2008. “Bergson in the Colony: Intuition and Duration in the Thought of Senghor and Iqbal.” Qui Parle 17 (1): 125–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dimier, Véronique. 2004. “For a Republic ‘Diverse and Indivisible’? France’s Experience from the Colonial Past.” Contemporary European History 13 (1): 45–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dosse, François. [1991] 1997. History of Structuralism, Vol. 1: The Rising Sign, 1945-1966, trans. Glassman, Deborah. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. [1903] 1986. “The Souls of Black Folk.” In Writings, ed. Huggins, Nathan, 357–547. New York: Library of America.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. 1909. “Politics and Industry.” In Proceedings of the National Negro Conference, 79–88. New York: National Negro Conference.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. 1910. “Reconstruction and Its Benefits.” American Historical Review 15 (4): 781–799.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. [1914] 1986. “Votes for Women.” In Writings, ed. Huggins, Nathan, 1158–1160. New York: Library of America.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. [1915] 1986. “Woman Suffrage.” In Writings, ed. Huggins, Nathan, 1169–1171. New York: Library of America.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. [1920] 2016. Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. [1924] 2007. The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. [1933] 1986. “Our Music.” In Writings, ed. Huggins, Nathan, 1238–1239. New York: Library of America.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. [1947] 1963. “The Pan-African Movement.” In History of the Pan-African Congress, ed. Padmore, George, 13–26. London: Hammersmith Bookshop.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. 1956. “To the Congres des ecrivains et artistes noires.” Présence Africaine (8-10): 383.Google Scholar
Ellison, Ralph. [1945] 2019. “Letter from Ralph Ellison to Kenneth Burke, 23 November 1945.” In The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison, eds. Callahan, John F. and Conner, Marc C., 203–208. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Ellison, Ralph. [1946] 2019. “Letter from Ralph Ellison to Richard Wright, 4 April 1946.” In The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison, eds. Callahan, John F. and Conner, Marc C., 212–213. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. [1952] 1967. Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Markmann, Charles Lam. New York: Grove Press.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. 1956. “Racism and Culture.” Présence Africaine (June–November): 122–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Getachew, Adom. 2019. Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Gooding-Williams, Robert. 2009. In the Shadow of Du Bois: Afro-Modern Political Thought in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gutiérrez, Ramón A. 2004. “Internal Colonialism: An American Theory of Race.” Du Bois Review 1 (2): 281–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hale, Thomas A., and Véron, Kora. 2009. “Aimé Césaire’s Break from the Parti Communiste Français: Nouveaux Élans, Nouveaux Défis.” French Politics, Culture, & Society 27 (3): 47–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herriot, Édouard. [1946] 1947. “Speech to the Constituent National Assembly, 27 August 1946.” In Annales de l’Assemblée Nationale Constituante. Débats, Volume II: du 23 Août au 25 Septembre 1946, 3333–3336. Paris: Imprimerie des Journeaux Officiels.Google Scholar
Jansen, Jan C., and Osterhammel, Jürgen. [2013] 2017. Decolonization: A Short History, trans. Riemer, Jeremiah. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Jennings, Eric T. 2001. Vichy in the Tropics: Pétain’s National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina, 1940-1944. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Jennings, Eric T. 2018. Escape from Vichy: The Refugee Exodus to the French Caribbean. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Donna. 2011. The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy: Négritude, Vitalism, and Modernity. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Kahan, Alan S. 2003. Liberalism in Nineteenth Century Europe: The Political Culture of Limited Suffrage. New York: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karatani, Rieko. 2003. Defining British Citizenship: Empire, Commonwealth and Modern Britain. London: Frank Cass.Google Scholar
Kesteloot, Lilyan. 1991. Black Writers in French: A Literary History of Negritude, trans. Kennedy, Ellen Conroy. Washington, DC: Howard University Press.Google Scholar
LaCapra, Dominick. 1995. “History, Language, and Reading: Waiting for Crillon.” American Historical Review 100 (3): 799–828.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landry, Adolphe. 1946. “France et Union Française. Il y faut deux citoyennetés.” Le Monde, September 17.Google Scholar
Lee, Daniel. 2014. Pétain’s Jewish Children: French Jewish Youth and the Vichy Regime, 1940-1942. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. [1949] 1969. The Elementary Structures of Kinship, trans. Bell, James Harle, von Sturmer, John Richard, and Heedham, Rodney. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1952. Race and History. Paris: UNESCO.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1955. “The Structural Study of Myth.” The Journal of American Folklore 68(270): 428–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. [1955] 1992. Tristes Tropiques, trans. , John and Weightman, Doreen. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1956. “Lettre au le Congrès d’artistes et écrivains noirs.” Présence Africaine (8–10): 384–385.Google Scholar
Lewis, James I. 1998. “The MRP and the Genesis of the French Union, 1944-1948.” French History 12 (3): 276–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David Levering. 2009. W. E. B. Du Bois: A Biography. New York: Henry Holt and Company.Google Scholar
Locke, Alain. [1925] 1997. The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Touchstone.Google Scholar
Loyer, Emmanuelle. 2005. Paris à New York: Intellectuels et artistes français en exil (1940-1947). Paris: Grasset.Google Scholar
Loyer, Emmanuelle. [2015] 2018. Lévi-Strauss: A Biography, trans. Vinsonneau, Ninon and Magidoff, Jonathan. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Mackie, Gerry. 2009. “Schumpeter’s Leadership Democracy.” Political Theory 37 (1): 128–153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mantena, Karuna. 2010. Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marrus, Michael R., and Paxton, Robert O.. 1981. Vichy France and the Jews. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Marshall, D. Bruce. 1973. The French Colonial Myth and Constitution-Making in the Fourth French Republic. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Marso, Lori J. 2014. “Solidarity Sans Identity: Richard Wright and Simone de Beauvoir Theorize Political Subjectivity.” Contemporary Political Theory 13 (3): 242–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myers, Ella. 2019. “Beyond the Psychological Wage: Du Bois on White Dominion.” Political Theory 47 (1): 6–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nesbitt, Nick. 2013. Caribbean Critique: Antillean Critical Theory from Toussaint to Glissant. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noiriel, Gérard. 1999. Les Origines républicaines de Vichy. Paris: Hachette Littératures.Google Scholar
Nord, Philip. 1995. The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Offerlé, Michel. 1993. Un Homme, une voix? Histoire du suffrage universel. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Pauley, Garth E. 2000. “W. E. B. Du Bois on Woman Suffrage: A Critical Analysis of his Crisis Writings.” Journal of Black Studies 30 (3): 383–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perego, Elisabeth. 2013. “Veil as Barrier to Muslim Women’s Suffrage in French Algeria, 1944-1954.” Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World 11 (2–3): 160–186.Google Scholar
Pollard, Miranda. 1998. Reign of Virtue: Mobilizing Gender in Vichy France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prashad, Vijay. 2007. The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World. London: The New Press.Google Scholar
Rassemblement Démocratique Africain. [1946] 1982. “Manifeste du Rassemblement Démocratique Africain.” In L’Afrique occidentale française de la conférence de Brazzaville (1944) a l’indépendance (1960), 559–561. Dakar: Les Nouvelles Éditions Africaines.Google Scholar
Robcis, Camille. 2020. “Frantz Fanon, Institutional Psychotherapy, and the Decolonization of Psychiatry.” Journal of the History of Ideas 81 (2): 303–325.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rosanvallon, Pierre. 1992. Le sacre du citoyen. Histoire du suffrage universel en France. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Rosanvallon, Pierre. 2013. The Society of Equals, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenblum, Nancy L. 1982. “Romantic Militarism.” Journal of the History of Ideas 43 (2): 249–268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, Kristin. 1994. Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rousso, Henry. 1994. The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sartori, Andrew. 2008. Bengal in Global Concept History: Culturalism in the Age of Capital. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, Paula. 1989. “ Partisanes and Gender Politics in Vichy France.” French Historical Studies 16 (1): 126–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, Joan. 1996. Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Senghor, Léopold Sédar. 1945. “Défense de l’Afrique noire.” Esprit (July): 237–248.Google Scholar
Senghor, Léopold Sédar. [1945] 1964. “Vues sur l’Afrique noire ou assimiler, non être assimilés.” In Liberté I: Négritude et Humanisme, 39–69. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.Google Scholar
Senghor, Léopold Sédar. 1946. “Speech at the National Constituent Assembly, 11 April 1946.” In Annales de l’Assemblée Nationale Constituante. Débats, Volume IV: du 1er au 17 Avril 1946, 1713–1715. Paris: Imprimerie des Journaux Officiels.Google Scholar
Senghor, Léopold Sédar. [1946] 1947. “Speech at the National Constituent Assembly, 18 September 1946.” In Annales de l’Assemblée Nationale Constituante. Débats, Volume II: du 23 Août au 25 Septembre 1946, 3790–3792. Paris: Imprimerie des Journaux Officiels.Google Scholar
Senghor, Léopold Sédar. 1949. “Un Humanisme de l’Union française.” Esprit (July): 1019–1034.Google Scholar
Senghor, Léopold Sédar. 1956. “The Spirit of Civilization or the Laws of African Negro Culture.” Présence Africaine (June–November): 51–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Senghor, Léopold Sédar. 1965. Prose and Poetry, trans. Reed, John and Wake, Clive. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sharpley-Whiting, T. D. 2002. Negritude Women. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Shepard, Todd. 2006. The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Sibalis, Michael D. 2002. “Homophobia, Vichy France, and the ‘Crime of Homosexuality.’” GLQ 8 (3): 301–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sklar, Kathryn Kish, and Kuzma, Chelsea. 1998. How Did the Views of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois toward Woman Suffrage Change, 1900-1915? Binghamton: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Son, Kyong-Min. 2020. The Eclipse of the Demos: The Cold War and the Crisis of Democracy Before Neoliberalism. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoczkowski, Wiktor. 2008. Anthropologies rédemptrices. Le monde selon Lévi-Strauss. Paris: Hermann Éditeurs.Google Scholar
Wells, Ida B. [1910] 2014. “How Enfranchisement Stops Lynchings.” In The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusaders, eds. Bay, Mia and Gates, Henry Louis Jr, 421–431. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Weil, Simone. 2003. Simone Weil on Colonialism: An Ethic of the Other, ed. Little, J. P.. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Wilder, Gary. 2015. Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Von Eschen, Penny M. 1997. Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Zaretsky, Eli. 2015. Political Freud: A History. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.