Progressive Geographies

Pablo Bustinduy, Space and Political Universalism in Early Modern Physics and Philosophy – Edinburgh University Press, March 2024

Examines how the imagination of space in the early modern period influenced the development of the modern concept of political universalism

• Offers a history and genealogy of the concept of space in the European philosophical tradition
  Presents the political effects of the modern cosmological transition
• Provides a systematic critique of the Westphalian logic of the State as absolute, universal, autonomous, and unique
• Gives an account of the developments and contradictions of abstract universalism, and its philosophical entanglement with the European colonial project and the nascent logic of capitalism
• Discusses the emancipatory content of universalism and the philosophical causes and effects of its contemporary crisis

How did early modern philosophy of space shape the modern concept of political universalism? In this book, Pablo Bustinduy persuasively argues that political universalism emerged from both the developments of Newtonian science and the formulation of the modern philosophy of the State. In the metaphysics of an open, empty, abstract and absolute space, Bustinduy suggests, the universalist project of modern politics found its logical model and foundation. There, the anxiety of a dislocated world was overcome, and the ontology of modern physics found a specific political expression that, despite being besieged by multiple crises, still animates our political imagination.

By offering a political reading of early modern philosophy of space, Space and Political Universalism in Early Modern Physics and Philosophy reveals the connections between the logical development of early modern science, the contemporary elaborations of the philosophy of the State, and the historical articulations of the Westphalian system, early capitalist social formations, and the European colonial project. In doing so, it offers a powerful reflection on how we might detach democracy from the ‘perilous metaphysics’ of infinite space that has engendered political violence and domination, positing space as an emptiness that prevents the closure of the political itself.

Catherine Hall, Lucky Valley: Edward Long and the History of Racial Capitalism – Cambridge University Press, February 2024

Why does Edward Long’s History of Jamaica matter? Written in 1774, Long’s History, that most ‘civilised’ of documents, attempted to define White and Black as essentially different and unequal. Long deployed natural history and social theory, carefully mapping the island, and drawing on poetry and engravings, in his efforts to establish a clear and fixed racialized hierarchy. His White family sat at the heart of Jamaican planter society and the West India trade in sugar, which provided the economic bedrock of this eighteenth-century system of racial capitalism. Catherine Hall tells the story behind the History of a slave-owning family that prospered across generations together with the destruction of such possibilities for enslaved people. She unpicks the many contradictions in Long’s thinking, exposing the insidious myths and stereotypes that have poisoned social relations over generations and allowed reconfigured forms of racial difference and racial capitalism to live on in contemporary societies.

• The first critical exploration of Long’s History of Jamaica in its full political and economic context 
• Essential to understanding the history of racial difference through ‘enlightenment’ definitions and how these have shaped society even to the present day 
• Explores the concept of racial capitalism and how race and wealth could not be disentangled

Mark Carrigan on writing – beginning of a series of posts. Thanks to Dave Beer for the link.