To be frank, I think fortuitous and organized action coalesce to create a revolution. Much of the reason why the Haitian Revolution was successful was because it was a mixture of meticulous planning and spontaneous fervor to revolt. Kurzman believes in the principal that revolution created the revolution while Camus argues that ideology provokes a revolution and that is an irresistible human compulsion, but the most potent revolutions finds a way to intertwine both practices.

A prime example to demonstrate how revolutions combine the element of accident and fate is how the moment of viability comes into fruition in a revolution. The moment of viability is the quintessential moment for the start of a revolution. It can be unforeseen and unpredictable, but not always. Planning implants the ideology of revolution that Camus contests for. It is done covertly and subversively and creates the causal explanation that there is a run up to the moment of viability. The run up to viability is the combination of ideology and restoring human dignity to avoid haphazard, coincidental moments of synced collective action. The Haitian Revolution and #MeToo movement became feasible because there were preceding incidents––a run-up to viability––whether with slave masters or sexual assault allegations, which began to build tension and anger among victims. These preceding events became the run up to viability where victims vehemently acted upon impulse which coincides with the causal explanation for coincidental revolutions.

Many of the thinkers we have read in this class seem to posit that, in some way or another, an inherent velocity toward a certain state of being exists among humankind. Whether this state of being is one where man’s universal desire to live as wholly human is actualized, as in Camus, or simply existing in a state free of intolerable encroaches on civil liberties or deprived economic conditions, there exists an undercurrent slowly pushing history towards this state, eventually causing revolution.

But an undercurrent cannot cause a revolution by itself, since it is, of course, a metaphysical object. Individuals have to play a role in this process, but to what extent are these undercurrents deterministic of individual action? I would argue that individuals are often consciously moved by less general forces, which lead them to commit actions that deliberately or unintentionally end up tapping into this undercurrent, which universalizes the action among a population and catalyzes participation in a revolutionary movement. An individual action, sparking like a single match, cannot by itself overcome the entrenched forces necessary to actualize a revolution. However, these individual sparks can ignite the undercurrents that they are standing over inadvertently or not, and set their whole society ablaze. These undercurrents flow underneath regimes like rivers of oil, full of hidden potential energy that requires an undetermined amount of sparks above ground before that energy is released.

In that sense, I would put the cause of revolutions as somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. I find Camus writing especially convincing as it seems the easiest to apply generally because it deals with metaphysical objects innate in all humans that also grow larger in repressive states or environments that tend to become the stages of revolutions.  Furthermore, his description of this undercurrent so to speak makes sense in the context of a force being triggered by individual, potentially arbitrary action, as watching someone else finally say “enough” and reclaim their humanity undoubtedly serves as an inspiration for others to do the same, causing the revolutionary chain reaction.

The concept of destiny or determinism is one that has confounded even the greatest philosophers. Instead of becoming entangled in the philosophical concerns surrounding the aforementioned notions of destiny and determinism, perhaps a more appropriate question to ask is whether revolutions are “accidental affairs” or inevitable.

I do not believe revolutions are inevitable, because inevitability is somewhat of a binary condition. If a revolution is “inevitable”, it implies that a revolution is going to occur no matter what, and that a revolution is unavoidable. The issue with the rigid nature of inevitability is that it struggles to account for the possibility of circumstantial change. For example, if a regime exercises reforms that satisfy its citizens, is a revolution still inevitable? Instead, I believe that it is more helpful to think of revolution in terms of probability, a far more fluid abstraction. The notion of probability is aptly able to account for every type of situation, from the more stable of societies like the United States, to the more volatile of countries, like Venezuela.

Another advantage of understanding revolutions in terms of probability, is that probability can actually conceptualize the notion of “accidental affairs”.  In societies where revolutions are highly probable (almost inevitable), a seemingly isolated incident can have a much higher chance to accidentally spark a revolution. Meanwhile, in societies where citizens are generally satisfied with their government, a similar accidental incident would most likely not provide the same incendiary spark that could lead to a full scale revolution.

Revolutions are often tied to flashy causes. There is a certain human appeal to this narrative: we like to pin the cause of a large-scale event, such as the arab spring, with the self-immolation of an otherwise unnoteworthy fruit vender. There narratives have a particular irresistible human appeal, and, in a sense, it is true that the arab spring can be traced back to one fruit vendor. But if that fruit vender had set himself on fire in the middle of times square, would that have caused a revolution to sweep America? That seems unlikely. So was there some preexisting conditions in Tunisia that lead into a revolution, but the fruit vender was needed to spark the fire?

This might look like another instance of the classical ‘great man’ vs ‘trends and forces’ historical argument. However, this is a distinct case, for the simple reason that the men involved are usually not great in any ordinary sense of the word. The fruit vender had, presumably, neither any special talents nor any special political power which would allow him to affect the events of history under normal circumstances. He was, however, great in another sense of the word: that is, he was extraordinary. Very few people choose to light themselves on fire. Is that not a form of greatness?

And yet that greatness through mental pathology, while it might have significant impact, is not nearly as rare as the conditions which lead to revolution. Once the situation in a country has progressed to the point where a suicidal fruit vender can spark a revolution, the country will rarely be pulled back from the brink before some spark comes along.

Revolutions, while often believed to be anchored in some aspect of spontaneity, are actually much more intertwined with destiny in my opinion. Arendt describes the actual word “revolution” as being “originally an astronomical term” referring to the “revolving motion of the stars” (Arendt, 35). It is this description of revolutions that I find most intriguing. The idea that they are rooted in something much deeper—something much harder to control—than just an innate human desire for liberation not only renders revolutions more powerful, but it renders them nearly inevitable.

To have something controlled (or at least linked with) the cosmos is extremely influential. Whether you subscribe to the idea of this unlimited power of the universe is irrelevant because the fact of the matter is that many others in the world do. They have done so for centuries (for explaining earthly phenomena and godlike beings) and still do to this day (with the daily use of horoscopes). While it does seem a bit heretical to claim that all revolutions are imminent due to some sort of all-controlling force, I do believe there is immense power in belief. If those who are planning to start a revolution believe there is some larger power on their side—something that practically guarantees them success—they are inherently willing to fight much harder and give up way more in order to ensure victory.

Now, while revolutionaries do not base their plan in the cosmos’ backup, they do base it in something just as uncontrollable: the undying human aspiration for freedom. This drive is strong enough for people to put their lives at risk, oftentimes the argument being that death would bring about more freedom than their current, real-world situation (this reminds me of the example of the Haitian woman who killed over seventy unborn children in order to free them from their future shackles and burdens). Although this human characteristic seems to be very man-controlled, who is to say that the universe does not play at least a small part in this drive for liberation?

Up until now we’ve seen revolutions depicted as contingent, even arbitrary events, the overthrow of kings and autocrats little more than happenstance, the unexpected, even unintended consequence of a fateful encounter between stumbling authority and a member of the crowd brave or exhausted enough to finally, definitively, say “no.”

This week’s readings presented us with nearly the opposite scenario:  Revolutions as performance (Furet and Arendt), as incurable pathology (Arendt), an irresistible novelty (again, Arendt, and to a certain extent, Tocqueville), or in the case of Camus’ rebel, as redemption of an irrepressible human spirit.  These accounts were met on the one hand by the skepticism of Burke (revolutions are bad) and Tocqueville (revolutions are unlikely in an era of equality), and on the other by the absolute certainty of Marx and Engels that (class) justice will be served (revolutions as historical necessity, the consequence of teleology).

Very briefly, between the two conceptual poles presented thus far in the course—revolutions as accidental affairs versus revolutions as destiny—where do you stand, and why?  Use this blog post as preparatory notes for next week’s discussion.

Below, I’ve listed a number of passages that may help you as you consider your answer:

“Civil wars have generally been assumed to be sterile, bringing only misery and disaster, while revolutions have often been seen as fertile ground for innovation and improvement…civil wars are local and time-bound, taking place within particular, usually national, communities, at particular moments.  By contrast, revolution seems almost a contagion, occurring when it does across the world, at least the modern world, which in a sense it defines, as an unfolding progress of human liberation.”  Armitage, Civil Wars:  A History in Ideas, pg. 122

“We insist that the part of man which cannot be reduced to mere ideas should be taken into consideration—the passionate side of his nature that serves no other purpose than to be part of the act of living…Rebellion, though apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended.”  Camus, The Rebel, pg. 19

“…a revolution is an attempt to shape actions to ideas, to fit the world into a theoretic frame.  That is why rebellion kills men while revolutions destroys both men and principles.”  Camus, The Rebel, pg. 106

“The modern concept of revolution, inextricably bound up with the notion that the course of history suddenly begins anew, that an entirely new story, a story never known or told before, is about to unfold, was unknown prior to the two great revolutions at the tend of the eighteenth century.  Before they were engaged in what then turned out to be a revolution, none of the actors had the slightest premonition of what the plot of the new drama was going to be.”  Arendt, On Revolution, pg. 21

“Only where this pathos of novelty is present and where novelty is connected with the idea of freedom are we entitled to speak of revolution.  This means of course that revolutions are more than successful insurrections and that we are not justified in calling every coup d’état a revolution or even in detecting one in each civil war…All these phenomena have in common with revolution that they are brought about by violence…but violence is no more adequate to describe the phenomenon of revolution than change; only where change occurs in the sense of a new beginning, where violence is used to constitute an altogether different form of government, to bring about the formation of a new body politics, where the liberation from oppression aims at least at the constitution of freedom can we speak of revolution.”  Arendt, On Revolution, pp. 27-28

To the Hone. Jno. Hancock Esqre. President of the Continental Congress; This Map of the Seat of Civil War in America is Respectfully Inscribed

At the end of the selection from Armitage’s piece on the Civil War in an Age of Revolutions, he writes that “when tracing the genealogy of modern revolutions, we should seriously consider the hypothesis that civil war was the genus of which revolution was only a species” (p. 158). This is an interesting assertion, for it posits that all revolutions are in fact civil wars, or rather wars between groups belonging to the same political entity, but which, even if not initially, seek to fundamentally change the distribution of power and to gain sovereignty for or over a particular group of people (rather than over a specified territory).

The key words, I believe, are sovereignty and people. Sovereignty is one of those weighty words in political science and international relations, but at its most basic is supreme authority, whether that is supreme authority within specified borders, for a particular group of people, or over one particular aspect of the state. In any event, sovereignty in whatever form is then inherently focused on changing the distribution of power, though in regards to what and how and for or over whom may remain unresolved questions even after the war. If this is so, then is revolution the act of struggling to attain sovereignty for or over a group of people? Or is it the actual fulfillment of sovereignty for or over a group of people, or does it encompass both?

Either way, the critical point is that revolutions are civil wars, but also that civil wars can become revolutionary. They become revolutionary through an assertion of sovereignty for or over a group of people that were once part of the same political entity as the other group(s). This analysis subsequently raises a host of further questions, such as what is the legal status of revolutionary civil wars? How and why does a group of people come to the collective determination of establishing sovereignty (however defined and envisioned)? Is sovereignty inviolable,or should it be? Why or why not? Does sovereignty provide civil war revolutionaries with a strategic, legal, or other advantage that would otherwise be unattainable if it were any other type of civil war? So, instead of asking why revolutions, perhaps the question should be why sovereignty?

“In order to build the new nation of Haiti. . .”

Considering the revolutionary tension of rupture and continuity, I ask myself to what extent is rupture an attempt at dismantling continuity. It seems self-evident, but this question takes a unique position in the context of the Haitian Revolution. In order to build a new nation of Haiti, Dessalines had to reconstruct the Haitian narrative by reconstructing Haitian revolutionist perceptions of race, indigeneity, and territorial claim.  Dessalines’ army, the “Indigenous Army,” claimed the name Haïti in the name of the Taino people, the original inhabitants of the islands. Dubois draws an interesting parallel between the French and African occupation of the island. What does it mean when the colonized become the colonizers?

Dessalines was very aware of this reality. In order to build a new Haiti, the nation had to construct an ancestral claim to the land, making it more of a righteous movement than a political and racial revolution. That is, until the question of who is to be considered Black in the new Black nation. In order to build a new Haiti, the nation had to also redefine constructions around race and racial identity. In various attempts to rupture the colonial legacy on the island, I ask myself how these attempts may have only exacerbated the legacy, simply shifting the lens? In what ways do attempts of historical rupture cause the continuity of historical legacy?