Insurgent multiplicities
| Published date | 01 July 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14748851221097678 |
| Date | 01 July 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Symposium on Tomba's Insurgent Universality |
Insurgent multiplicities
Kevin Olson
University of California, Irvine, United States
Abstract
My discussion of Massimiliano Tomba’sInsurgent Universality focuses on intertwined
themes of historicism, normativity, and revolution that I find particularly generative.
By drawing them together I hope to trace out important parts of the book’s conceptual
infrastructure, especially the way it uses insurgent moments of the past to conceptualize
alternative modernities. My particular focus is the sense in which Tomba hopes to
“reactivate”important aspects of past insurgent moments. In the end, I argue that his
arguments actually go much farther to displace universalism than he credits them.
Agreeing with the spirit of Tomba’s work rather than its letter, I believe that he provides
us with good grounds to focus on insurgent multiplicities rather than insurgent
“universality.”
Keywords
Insurgent politics, universalism, alternative modernities, revolution, Massimiliano Tomba
Political universalism has been on the ropes since the very beginning (Olson, 2018). Ideas
of a universal general will, originating in 17
th
century theological debates, were rearticu-
lated as political theology in the 18
th
century by Denis Diderot and others. They quickly
came under fire from the likes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1987: 37), however, who cri-
ticized the “metaphysical ideas”manifested in such doctrines and gave them a concrete,
material, contractarian meaning instead. Conceptions of a universal “rights of man”fared
no better. They became entangled in the decades-long struggle over American independ-
ence and the French revolution. Those movements operated under the banner of univer-
salist ideals, but in so doing only revealed how problematic universalism truly was. Thus
when the third great revolution of the 18
th
century erupted in colonial Haiti, universalist
ideals were taken up only briefly, then quickly set aside (Olson, 2016: 124–131).
Corresponding author:
Kevin Olson, University of California, Irvine, United States.
Email: kevin.olson@uci.edu
Symposium on Tomba’sInsurgent Universality
European Journal of Political Theory
2023, Vol. 22(3) 496–502
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/14748851221097678
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