Delbello - Feldman

This week’s readings tie in with those of last weeks, tackling issues related to American liberalism and how its ideology is so pervasive that reaches and connects different and seemingly disparate fields. Feldman argues that a construction of liberalism has been indispensable to provide a justification for imperialist wars and cultural motifs, and to produce a narrative of civilization together with Israel in the attempt to colonizing and “civilize” Palestine. In articulating his idea of racialization he argues that “Racial liberalism names the ideas informing the US state’s official commitment to the national integration of African Americans. Legal and discursive commitments to Black integration were seen to evidence US-led liberal capitalism’s capacity to dispense freedom and serve as a moral guarantor for a globalizing Americanism (p.27)”

Feldman traces this debate back to the creation of an ideological project for American imperialism vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, especially in the early Cold War and later in the support for Israeli, in an attempt to “donate” democracy to the “Muslim world.” It also worked as a US counterbalance to Soviet Union’s social program.

Mark Mazower calls this issue “liberal antiracism of human rights,” which really is an “imperial internationalism,” a perfect disguise for projects of domination.

Feldman also reminds us about how Moynihan and his trip to Israel were one of the fundamental moments in which Israel was associated with the “metaphor for democracy.” This is an argument which is tangentially made by Puar when talking about queer theory and a connection to the US imperialism. Queer bodies are included in imperialist discussions if they fully accept project of US colonialism.

So some of the questions would be around the use of such a methodology and the ways in which we can incorporate a critique to Imperialism. I think that an analysis of what liberalism is, back to its Lockian roots, is very urgent and needed, as Lisa Lowe correctly argues in her “The Intimacies of Four Continents” and Rod Ferguson’s point of capitalism being a progressive force while destroying and colonizing everything. How do we talk about how liberalism works in creating identities that act as a “neoliberal progressive” power? Should we then, as already stressed in class, talk about ontology and not only about epistemology?