The Revolutionary Spirit: Hannah Arendt and Black Political Thought

This event occurred on:  In On Revolution, Hannah Arendt celebrated what she called “the revolutionary spirit”: a set of political principles that combines a commitment to invent new institutions with a concern for those institutions’ durability. Arendt believed that all genuine revolutions in the modern world had been inspired by the revolutionary spirit, though “the failure of thought and remembrance” had, time and again, led to its disappearance. Indeed, a focus on the act of collective foundation—and a grave worry about the disappearance of the conditions under which such founding can take place—can be found across Arendt’s oeuvre, from Origins of Totalitarianism to her writings on American politics in the 1970s.

Black revolutionaries working under conditions of extreme repression to transform the societies they inhabited also found they had to rework and reinvent revolutionary theory and praxis. Retelling the history of the Black liberation struggle and working alongside the decolonial movements of their day, thinkers like W.E.B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, and Kwame Ture—to name a few people whose work can be found in Arendt’s library—as well as C.L.R. James, Walter Rodney, Sylvia Wynter, Cedric Robinson, Angela Davis and many others—breathed new life into the concept of revolution. Like Arendt, these thinkers confronted a legacy of loss and disappointment. They also sought to reclaim from the history of revolutions past meaningful insights that might inspire and renew contemporary revolutionary movements.

Arendt was often harshly critical of such movements, particularly those claiming the mantle of Black power. Nevertheless, in a testament to the power of Arendt’s ideas, a number of political thinkers working in the revolutionary tradition of Black political thought have found her a valuable thinking partner. This conference brings together scholars engaged with—and in the spirit of—Hannah Arendt’s work in theorizing Black revolutionary politics, to address such questions as: How has the concern for beginning and durability animated Black political thought? What encounters between Arendt and Black political thinkers have been hitherto overlooked or misunderstood? How might concepts from within Black political thought illuminate the phenomena, events, and texts central to the Arendtian “archive” (e.g. the council system), and how might Arendt’s concepts illuminate revolutionary phenomena and events in the “archive” of Black political thought? How have the critical interventions of Black political thinkers challenged or enhanced our understanding of Arendt’s theory of revolution and vice versa? Where, if anywhere, do we find the revolutionary spirit today?

The event will take place in-person and will be free and open to the Bard community. Please direct any questions to Jess Feldman ([email protected])