Andrea J. Pitts - Beyond Bergson: Examining Race and Colonialism through the Writings of Henri Bergson

BEYOND BERGSON

SUNY series, Philosophy and Race

Robert Bernasconi and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, editors

BEYOND BERGSON

EXAMINING RACE AND COLONIALISM
THROUGH THE WRITINGS OF HENRI BERGSON

EDITED BY

ANDREA J. PITTS AND
MARK WILLIAM WESTMORELAND

FOREWORD BY

LEONARD LAWLOR

On the cover: Night Journey by artist Frank Bowling (British, born Guyana, 1936)

Date: 196970

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Dimensions: H. 833/4 W. 721/8 in. (212.7 183.2 cm)

Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. Accession number 2011.590.2.

Gift of Maddy and Larry Mohr, 2011.

2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/DACS, London

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

2019 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

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For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Pitts, Andrea J., editor. | Westmoreland, Mark William, 1983, editor.

Title: Beyond Bergson : examining race and colonialism through the writings of Henri Bergson / edited by Andrea J. Pitts and Mark William Westmoreland.

Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2019] | Series: SUNY series, philosophy and race | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018020075 | ISBN 9781438473512 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438473536 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Bergson, Henri, 18591941.

Classification: LCC B2430.B43 B479 2019 | DDC 194dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018020075

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Leonard Lawlor

Introduction
Creative Extensions

Andrea J. Pitts and Mark William Westmoreland

Part I
Bergson on Colonialism, Social Groups, and the State

Chapter 1
Decolonizing Bergson: The Temporal Schema of the Open and the Closed

Alia Al-Saji

Chapter 2
The Language of Closure: Homogeneity, Exclusion, and the State

Martin Shuster

Chapter 3
The Politics of Sympathy in Bergsons The Two Sources of Morality and Religion

Melanie White

Part II
Bergsonian Themes in the Ngritude Movement

Chapter 4
Bergson, Senghor, and the Philosophical Foundations of Ngritude: Intellect, Intuition, and Knowledge

Clevis Headley

Chapter 5
The Spectacle of Belonging: Henri Bergsons Comic Negro and
the (Im)possibility of Place in the Colonial Metropolis

Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel

Part III
Race, Revolution, and Bergsonism in Latin America

Chapter 6
Racial Becomings: Evolution, Materialism, and Bergson in Spanish America

Adriana Novoa

Chapter 7
Bergsonism in Postrevolutionary Mexico: Antonio Casos Theory of Aesthetic Intuition

Andrea J. Pitts

Chapter 8
Antagonism and Myth: Jos Carlos Mariteguis Revolutionary Bergsonism

Jaime Hanneken

Foreword

The Hope for this Volume: Sympathy

L EONARD L AWLOR

It is an honor for me to write the foreword to this volume, which extends Henri Bergsons thought into areas of research that Bergson himself probably would have never imagined. It is in fact gratifying for me to see a volume like this appear. It is a good sign for those of us who see in Bergson a model for philosophical work. Over the twenty years or so that I have worked on Bergson, three ideas have appeared to me to be fundamental in his thinking and fundamental for genuine philosophical work: the starting point in an intuition, the idea of qualitative multiplicity, and the idea of creative emotions. This last idea comes from Bergsons The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. The Two Sources, appearing in 1932, may be Bergsons greatest work. It is also, however, the most controversial. I will turn to what is controversial in The Two Sources at the end of this foreword. The problem of what Bergson says about the primitives in The Two Sources will disclose my hope for this volume.

The first idea that is fundamental is the starting point for all philosophical thinking in an intuition. In Bergson, the word intuition has two senses. On the one hand, for Bergson, intuition refers to a method. It is precisely the expression of the experience in meaningful words and actions that distinguishes the mystic from the madman. I think the identification of intuition with a mystical vision is important because it seems that philosophy must maintain its traditional aim of being presuppositionless. If philosophy indeed aims to be presuppositionless, then only an encounter like the mystical vision allows us to eliminate presuppositions. As philosophers, we need to be thrown into disequilibrium. But is this encounter enough to free us from the prejudices relative to our times? As we shall see at the end, the answer is probably not.

The second idea that is fundamental for philosophical thinking in general is Bergsons idea of qualitative multiplicity. In his first book, Time and Free Will, published in 1889, Bergson distinguishes (through the method of intuition) qualitative multiplicity from quantitative multiplicity. As the name suggests, a quantitative multiplicity enumerates things or states of consciousness by means of externalizing one from another in a homogeneous space. In contrast, a qualitative multiplicity consists in a temporal heterogeneity, in which several conscious states are organized into for a new kind of social collectivity, one that is at once heterogeneous and interpenetrating, or, more simply, one that is sympathetic.

The third idea that is fundamental for philosophical thinking in general is the idea of creative emotions. Creative emotions elaborate on the idea of intuition with which we started, and therefore we turn back to The Two Sources. The difference between creative emotions and normal, uncreative emotions consists in this: in normal emotions, we first have a representation that causes the feeling (I see my friend and then I feel happy); in creative emotion, we first have the emotion that then creates representations. Outside of all the intellectual work of selecting and arranging, the composer was in search of inspiration, an indivisible emotion which intelligence helped to unfold into music. Thanks to the two examples, we see that creative emotions are themselves created (Rousseau), but also creating (Beethoven). The idea of creative emotions is important for philosophical thinking because a creative emotion, like an intuition and a mystical vision, throws one out of the habitual mode of thinking. It requires the abandonment of common sense and customs. Within The Two Sources, creative emotions are important because they open an individuals soul, transforming the person into a hero, who in turn opens society through the creation of new values, and the hero being a mystic makes religion dynamic. Dynamic religion is the religion of love. In The Two Sources