Hist 216A: Conceptualizing a Twentieth Century Age of Revolutions in the Middle East

HIST 216A: CONCEPTUALIZING A TWENTIETH CENTURY AGE OF REVOLUTIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST, LATIN AMERICA, AND THE CARIBBEAN

Instructors: Prof. Greg Childs:

Prof. Naghmeh Sohrabi:

Office Hours: By appointment

Course Description and Objectives

Few regions of the world experienced revolutionary turmoil over the course of the last century like Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. In the century between the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and the Tunisian Revolution of 2010, a host of other revolutions unfolded that likewise succeeded in overturning established regimes in these parts of the globe. Yet in comparative studies of revolutions, many of these revolutionary events are forgotten, renamed, or marked as local conflicts that are relegated to their national histories. This graduate seminar funded by the Mellon foundation, is framed by three questions: Why are some revolutions deemed more global and thus more significant than others? Should the cluster of late twentieth century revolutions be conceptualized by scholars as a forgotten age of revolutions, one that much like its late 18th and early 19th centuries counterpart, had reverberations that last until today? And, what is at stake in this new conceptualization of revolutions beyond the exercise of recovering silenced or neglected narratives?

To answer these questions, this seminar will bring together the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, political science, comparative literature, history, and performance studies to bear on six case studies: Bolivia 1952-1964, Algeria 1954-1962, Oman 1965-1975, Iran 1979, Grenada 1979, and Nicaragua 1979.

For more information, please visit the seminar website at: misplaced-revolutions.com

Learning Goals

Over the 2017-2018 academic year, we will anchor our interdisciplinary exchange in four crucial and connected thematic threads:

1. The false opposition of core vs. derivative revolutions that makes some revolutions into “world-historical events,” which are seen to be the generators of ideas replicated on a more national level in other places;
2. The distinction between revolutionary theory (what revolutionaries read, for example) and revolutionary programs of action (what they hoped to accomplish);
3. Alternative genealogies of revolutions (whether all revolutions looked to the French or the Russian ones, for example, as the source of their ideas);
4. The politics of naming and its implications (why some events were called and treated as revolutions in their times, only to be renamed differently in the scholarship).

Our seminar will culminate in a discussion about whether and how attending to these thematic threads can lead to a different conceptualization of twentieth-century revolutions in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East, and ramifications of this new conceptualization for the study of revolutions in general.

This graduate course is part of the Mellon Sawyer seminar that will be run by Greg Childs and Naghmeh Sohrabi over 2017-18. The seminar itself is funded by the Mellon foundation and envisioned as a temporary research center that over the academic year will create a campus-wide conversation on comparative twentieth century revolutions in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. Graduate students who enroll in this course will be part of this year long seminar, for which they will receive the credit equivalent to that of a semester long course. As such, the workload in this course will be similar to that of a four-credit course (roughly 9 hours/week of study time) spread over 9 months even though the course itself will not be meeting every week. Please plan accordingly so you are not overwhelmed the night before a seminar meeting.

Course Requirements

Attendance and Participation: 50%

Student Responses to be posted on seminar website: 20%

Final 20 page analytical paper due May 8th: 30%

Student participation and written work will be evaluated based on graduate level criteria such as depth of analysis and critical engagement with texts and the ideas of the course.

All readings will be available on the seminar’s website.

University Statement on Documented Disability: If you are a studentwith a documented disability on record at Brandeis University and wish to have a reasonable accommodation made for you in this class, please see us immediately. Please keep in mind that reasonable accommodations are not provided retroactively.

Academic Integrity: You are expected to be honest in all of your academic work. Please consult Brandeis University Right and Responsibilities for all policies and procedures related to academic integrity. Please familiarize yourself with what constitutes plagiarism in an academic setting. If you have any doubts or questions, feel free to us any of the instructors.

Seminar Plan

Each of the seminar session below will have 2-3 invited guests. These scholars will be asked to assign readings of their choice that will address the themes of each session. These readings will be available on the seminar website and are required for graduate students who will be part of the larger faculty members of the seminar and are expected to be active participants.

All closed seminar sessions will take place in Olin-Sang 207. The opening and closing events will take place in the Mandel Atrium.

In addition to the seven sessions outlined below, the graduate students will be meeting the invited guests for a lunch discussion the day before or after the seminar session, depending on the guests’ schedules. These luncheons are aimed at providing an intimate setting for the graduate students and the post-docs to discuss the ideas in the reading with our guests. We will also meet in a discussion group with Prof. Childs, Prof. Sohrabi, and the two Mellon Sawyer post-docs, Dr. Vivian Solana Moreno and Dr. Manijeh Moradiantwice during the semester. The reading list for the graduate student only sessions will be determined by the instructors and the two post-docs based on the interests of the graduate students and will be supplementary to the seminar’s syllabus.Please note that the readings in the syllabus below are subject to change.

Fall Semester 2017

Meeting 1: Tbd

First Graduate Student Meetings: in the first week of classes.

Meeting 2: Monday September 11, 2017, 5-7 Pm, Reception 7-8:30 Pm

KICKOFF EVENT: ARE SOME REVOLUTIONS MORE IMPORTANT THAN OTHERS?

Our kickoff eventwill focus on the provocative question of whether some revolutions are more important than others. The discussion will occur between scholars of the American/French/China/Cuba revolutions and scholars of the smaller, more “national” revolutions at the core of our seminar. We will give the panelists the thematic threads of this proposal and ask them to lay out their answer to the panel’s question systematically. We hope that the ideas and conversations generated by this kickoff event will carry through the seminar.

For this session, we have invited two established theorists of political revolution. Bernard Yack, Professor of Politics at Brandeis University, and author of The Longing for Total Revolution: Philosophic Sources of Discontent from Rousseau to Marx (1992), has focused principally on revolutions in Europe since the French Revolution. David Scott, Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, is a specialist on Caribbean revolutionary history from the Haitian Revolution of 1791 to the Grenada Revolution of 1972. In his seminal book, Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment (2004), Scott explicitly and enthusiastically cites Yack’s concept of “longing” as he tries to re-conceptualize how we write histories of the Haitian Revolution. Yack’s concept of longing is cited again in Scott’s next book on the Grenada Revolution, Omens of Adversity: Tragedy, Time, Memory, Justice (2014). Thus we intend to start our seminar by having these two leading scholars and theorists of revolutions engage in a conversation beyond the pages of their scholarship. This should be a particularly fruitful dialogue given that both of these scholars over the course of their career have worked on “global revolutions” (the French and Haitian Revolutions) and on smaller, “national” revolutions.

Readings:

Bernard Yack, "Introduction," TheLonging For Total Revolution: Philosophic Sources of Social Discontent from Rousseau to Marx and Nietzsche,(Berkeley: UC Press, 1992), pp. 3-31

David Scott, "Prologue," Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), pp. 1-29.

Meeting 3: Tuesday September 12, 2018, 5-8 Pm

SESSION 1) FRAMING AND RE-FRAMING TWENTIETH CENTURY REVOLUTIONS

Guest Participant:

David Scott (Anthropology, Columbia University)

Our opening session will lay out the questions and themes of this seminar. Additionally, we will discuss the logic behind our selection of case studies and lay out, with the group, a roadmap for the year. Rather than begin with the unanswerable question of “what is a revolution?” we will discuss what is at stake in naming some events revolutions and others as rebellions, insurrections, or wars of independence. How does this practice render some events more visible and enduring than others? What criteria have scholars established that allow or encourage us to think about some revolutions in tandem or in comparison with one another? Additionally, we will discuss notions of failed vs. successful revolutions, and, connectedly, the multiple ways in which revolutionary genealogies can be and are constructed. For example, is success merely linked to revolutionaries who are able to stay in power after winning a conflict, and is failure linked to an inability to maintain power after winning a conflict? In other words, what is the overarching consideration for scholars when we categorize certain revolutions as successful and others as failures?

Readings For This Session:

• T. Skocpol, “Rentier State and Shi'a Islam in the Iranian Revolutions” Theory and Society II:3 (1982), 265-283.
• Gary Wilder, “Unthinking France, Rethinking Decolonization,” in Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World, (Duke University Press, 2015), p.1-16
• David Scott, Omens of Adversity: Tragedy, Time, Memory, Justice, (Duke University Press, 2014), 1-172
• Eric Selbin, "Chapter 8: Revolutions of the Lost and Forgotten,” in Revolution, Rebellion, Resistance: The Power of Story, (Zed Books, 2010).
• Simeon C.R. McIntosh, “Legitimacy, Validity and the Doctrine of Law,” in Kelsen in the Grenada Court: Essays on Revolutionary Legality, (Ian Randle Publishers, 2008), p.1-46.

Meeting 4: Wednesday October 25, 5:30-8:30 pm

SESSION 2) CORE/DERIVATIVE REVOLUTIONS

Guest participants:

Murium Haleh Davis (Algeria, History, UCSC)

Daniel Goldstein (Bolivia, Anthropology, Rutgers University)

In introducing the term “core revolutions” we mean to denote revolutions that scholars working across a number of fields identify as being central to understanding a particular historical moment, political concept, or development in artistic or humanistic representation. The scope and identification of core revolutions changes according to the period or epoch in question. Thus, for historians of the eighteenth and the nineteenth century, the core revolutions of the period are understood to be the trio of American,French, and recently, Haitian revolutions. A number of nineteenth century European and American revolutions also unfolded during this period, a fact that contributes to the period from 1763-1848 being defined as the “Age of Revolutions.” Yet these other revolutions are often studied and measured as derivations of the American, French, and Haitian revolutions. Thus, while there are variations in the geographical and temporal span of the “Age of Revolutions” concept, scholars who work on the period generally share the notion that the significance of the age comes from the global transformations that resulted from these three core revolutions. , Similarly there was no shortage of revolutions in the twentieth century. Scholars of the twentieth century, particularly those working on comparative studies of revolutions usually single out the Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions as three revolutions that, initiated alternatives to a capitalist vision of society and economics. These core revolutions are hence seen as originating a wide spectrum of historical concepts and developments that have come to define the twentieth century such as nationalism, human rights, communism, Leninism, and sovereignty. Revolutions that come later are marked, though not explicitly, as derivatives of these original revolutions.

Here, we ask: To what extent is this division a historiographical one and to what extent is the division a product of political theory or sociological groupings? In other words, how might the division be a construct of disciplinary procedures and how might we approach the question from an interdisciplinary standpoint? Rather than try to deconstruct or dismantle this unspoken binary, the session will focus on avenues of inquiry that such a binary has both made possible but also closed. For example, our session will look at questions of revolutionary reverberations (such as those of Algeria, Bolivia, and Iran) and trace global concepts that were born out of these revolutions with an eye towards expanding our conceptual framework for studying revolutions.

Readings For This Session:

• Forrest Hylton and Sinclair Thomson, Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in Bolivian Politics, p.1-172
• Marnia Lazreg, “Nationalism, Decolonization and Gender,” in The Eloquence of Silence: Algerian Women in Question, p.118-141
• Davis (to assign 150 pages)
• Goldstein (to assign 150 pages)

Total: 495 pages

Meeting 5: Wednesday October 26, Noon-1:30pm

LUNCH AT FACULTY CLUB WITH PROFS. DAVIS AND GOLDSTEIN

Meeting 6: Wednesday November 29, 4-6 pm

PUBLIC EVENT: TRANSLATING REVOLUTIONARY THEORY INTO PRACTICE; A CONVERSATION WITH PROFS. BRIAN MEEKS AND BEHROOZ GHAMARI-TABRIZI

Meeting 7: Thursday November 30, Noon-1:30 pm

LUNCH AT FACULTY CLUB WITH GRADUATE STUDENTS AND POST-DOCS

Meeting 8: Thursday November 30, 2018, 5-8 pm

SESSION 3) REVOLUTIONARY THEORIES AND REVOLUTIONARY PROGRAMS

The notion of a core/derivative division in world revolutions is reinforced by the canon of revolutionary texts created at the core and consumed by the derivative. Works by Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao and a wide body of translated novels were the shared texts of twentieth century revolutions. This collection of revolutionary texts was also undergirded by knowledge of other classic texts and “great books” of western philosophy that were read by revolutionaries far and wide. For example, the multiple strands of the Iranian revolution--leftist students, secular nationalists, Marxist-Islamists, to name a few--meant that the works of a wide range of writers, from Lenin, to Plato, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Reed, and Shariati constituted the revolutionary canon. Likewise, Bolivian revolutionaries in the Bolivian Trotskyist Party were certainly familiar with works written by the namesake of their affiliation, yet they were also influenced by Rousseau’s concept that law and political rule should mirror the “general will” of the people. While scholars have generally understood that revolutionaries were reading a corpus of shared texts, less attention has been given to the dreams and motives that drew peoples in different times and places to these same texts, and which in turn influenced their multiple understandings. While many revolutionaries far and wide read Marx’s Capital or Plato’s Republic were they seeking the same answers to the same questions in them?

Using the lens and methods of political theory and literary criticism, this session thus asks: Is there a distinction to be made between revolutionary theory (i.e. the cannon consumed) and revolutionary programs (the utopian vision revolutionaries had)? In other words, while everyone was reading the same texts were they also dreaming the same dreams?

Guest Participants:

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi (Iran, Sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana

Brian Meeks, (Grenada, Chair of Africana Studies, Brown University)

Readings For This Session:

• Hannah Arendt,“The Meaning of Revolution,” and “The Social Question,” in On Revolution, (Penguin edition, 1990), p.21-114.
• Crane Brinton,“Introduction,” in The Anatomy of Revolution, (Vintage revised edition, 1965), p3-26.
• Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi,Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment, (U of Minnesota Press, 2016),p.1-18; 55-192.
• Brian Meeks, Caribbean Revolutions and Revolutionary Theory: An Assessment of Cuba, Nicaragua and Grenada, (University of West Indies Press, 2001), p.1-196.
• Shalini Puri, “Preface” and “Introduction: The Scales of History” in The Grenada Revolution in the Caribbean Present: Operation Urgent Memory,(Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2014), p.x-29.
• Eric Selbin, “The Case for Stories: Stories and Social Change,” in Revolution, Rebellion, Resistance: The Power of Story, (Zed Books, 2010), p.23-47.
• Jeff Goodwin, “Conclusion: Generalizations and Prognostication,” in No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945-1991, (Cambridge University Press, 2001), p.289-306.
• John Foran, “Discourses and Social Forces,” in Foran (ed.),Theorizing Revolutions, (Routledge, 1997), p.203-218.

Total: 543pgs

Spring Semester 2018

Meeting 9: Tuesday January 16, 2018, 5-8 pm

SESSION 4) ALTERNATIVE GENEALOGIES OF REVOLUTIONS

Guest Participants:

Karen Kampwirth, (Nicaragua, Political Science, Knox College)

Lauri Lambert (African American and African Studies, UC Davis)

Charles Kurzman (Sociology, UNC)

This session asks: Does a distinction between revolutionary theory and dreams lead to alternative genealogies of revolutions? The common corpus of texts of some of these late 20th century revolutions has led to a genealogy that traces them back to the Russian revolution, the Chinese revolution, the Cuban revolution, and sometimes (though less commonly) to the French revolution as their originary moment. Depending on the revolution in question, these genealogical lines are configured through a consideration of

geography, time of occurrence, and diplomatic histories. Thus for example, Grenada and Nicaragua are thought of as derivatives of Cuba first and foremost, and almost never of Russia, given the proximity of the Grenada and Nicaragua Revolutions to Cuba geographically and temporally, and the diplomatic relations established with Cuba. The Algerian Revolution, on the other hand, is often compared to Russia and seldom to the French Revolution, despite the fact that Algeria was a French colony. This is largely based on the closer proximity in time to the Russian Revolution and the aid to Algerian insurgents from the Soviet Union, which was also the first country to establish diplomatic relations with the newly independent country. But is it also because a French revolutionary lineage has come to imply a revolution based on Enlightenment values, values that would be hard to reconcile with post-revolutionary one-party rule of the National Liberation Front?