Rethinking revolutionary times
| Published date | 01 July 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14748851221099657 |
| Author | Lawrie Balfour |
| Date | 01 July 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Symposium on Tomba's Insurgent Universality |
Rethinking revolutionary
times
Lawrie Balfour
University of Virginia, USA
Abstract
Massimiliano Tomba’sInsurgent Univ ersality is a stunning book. Conceptually, historic-
ally, and rhetorically innovative, it shows how popular challenges to conservative
and liberal forms of state-centered politics outlive attempts to contain and repress
them. Tomba’s reading of revoluti onary declar ations and manif estos in France , Saint-
Domingue, Russia, Mexico, and elsewhere recalls experimental democratic practices
that can animate contemporary political thinking. After surveying some of Insurgent
Universality’s key contributions, I ask how Tomba’s argument could be extended in rela-
tion to recent debates about the politics of memory and consider what possibilities its
anti-statism forecloses. Finally, I explore what gets lost in formulations of modernity
that do not come to terms with racialized forms of bondage and dispossession and
invite Tomba to speculate about how radical theories of politics might navigate
between romantic figurations of democratic excess, on one hand, and a tragic pre-
occupation with aftermaths, on the other.
Keywords
Tomba, time, democracy, coloniality, race
Insurgent Universality: An Alternative Legacy of Modernity begins with a vivid image.
Human history is likened to a river, hemmed in by conservative forces on one side
and progressive reformers on the other; when common people, like the river, rise up
and overflow the banks, their excess reshapes the land. “Insurgent universality can be
compared to this river,”Massimiliano Tomba (2019) explains “when the practice of dem-
ocracy exceeds the constitutional shell of the state”(1). Tomba’s book mines modern
history for such moments of overflow and asks how they unsettle our understanding
not only of the present but also of the workings of time itself. Looking to examples
Corresponding author:
Lawrie Balfour, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA.
Email: klb3q@virginia.edu
Symposium on Tomba’sInsurgent Universality
European Journal of Political Theory
2023, Vol. 22(3) 503–508
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/14748851221099657
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