Shane Moran - Alternation Journal
Shane Moran - Alternation Journal
Shane Moran - Alternation Journal
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UUV~CL ALILLIYLJICIYI Racial Governmentality: Thornas Jeferson and AI;ic~ln Colonisation<br />
This anxious excitement becomes even clearer in the rest of the letter's third<br />
paragraph. Continuing from the passage above,<br />
I remember your purcliase of a watcli in Philadelphia. If it should not have<br />
proved good, you can probably sell her. In that case I can get for you Iiere.<br />
one made as perfcct as human art can make it for about 24 louis. I have had<br />
sucl~ a one made by the best & most faithful hand in Paris. It has a second<br />
hand. but no repeating. no day of the month. nor other useless thing to<br />
impede and injure tlie movements which are nccessaly. For 12 Iouis liiorc<br />
you can have in the sanx cover, but on the back side cYr. absolutely<br />
unconnected \vitIi the rnovemcnts of the watch. a pcdornetes whicli shall<br />
render you an exact account of the distances you walk. Yourpleasurchereon<br />
shall be awaited (Jefferson 1899.1:73-86)<br />
Here, modern technology and craftsmanship are also placed firmly in Paris, to the<br />
implicit e~nbarrass~nent of Philadelphia, the supposed home of the 1110st enlightened of<br />
revolutions. The letter then proceeds to add politics and the arts to the list of Europe's<br />
claims to the light of Enlightenment. A long discussion of the statue Houdon, a French<br />
sculptor, is to make of George Washington (Jefferson 1899.1:87-110) is followed by a<br />
further recomlnendatio~~ that a bust of Count Rochambeau be placed in the 'new<br />
capitol' ncxt to 'that of Gates, Greene, Franklin' in honor of his similar contr~bution<br />
(Jefferson 1899 1.137-1451, and an excited description of 'one new invention ... a<br />
mixture of the arts of engraving and pnnting, rendering both cheaper' (Jefferson<br />
1899 1,158-1 70)". Jefferson also makes a recommendation that the Marquis de<br />
Lafayette be glven land in the U S. in honor of his contributio~i to the ~nlighte~rnent~'.<br />
In fact, Jefferson justifies this gift of land on the grounds that 'the day [may] come when<br />
it might be an useful asyluln to him' (122f). That this day, in which the U.S. would be<br />
the new home of such enlightened figures as the Marquis, has clearly not arrived-that<br />
it is still to come-is precisely the source of the letter's ambivalence over the traffic of<br />
Enlightenment from Europe to the U.S.<br />
Jefferson's final comments to Madison, given in a post-script, only deepen this<br />
ambivalence:<br />
P.S. Could you procure PL send me an hundred or two nuts of the peccan?<br />
" Jean Baptiste Donaticn de Vimeur, or Count Rochambeau. was a French soldier \vho served<br />
under Washington in the Revolutionary War. Sent to the U.S. in 1780, he got through the Hritisli<br />
blockade in 178 1 and eventually comnlanded French troops in the battle that led to the surrender<br />
of Lord Cornwallis. Made a Marshal of France in 1791, he was then imprisoned and almost<br />
guillotined during the'rerror. butNapoleon later restored his rankand estates.<br />
?"<br />
In recognition of Lafayette's niany activities as a soldier in support of revolutionaries in tlie<br />
U.S. and France, and his troubles in France after the 'Terror. [he U.S. Congress gave him a huge<br />
land grant in Lo~iisianna in 1803, as well as $200.000 and a township in Florida in 1824.<br />
they would enable me to oblige some characters here wliom 1 should be<br />
much gratified to oblige. They s1io~1ld come packed in sand. The seeds ot<br />
the sugar maple too would be a great present (Jefferson 1899.7: 173- 178).<br />
economic satellite of Europe, sending primary goods to France and receiving<br />
ge, the arts, and political luminaries fi-om the same, Jefferson's U.S. is very<br />
11 struggling to capture its share of Enlightenment, and Jefferson is still quite<br />
ed that any such capture will need to be seen and judged by European eyes.<br />
This European surveillance and judgement is particularly powerful to<br />
.son precisely because it is inseparable from Enlightenment. The light of<br />
htenment seems to figure and be figured by the watchful and judgmental gaze of<br />
ope. The letter to Madison thus allegorises a fear inseparable fiom admiration, a<br />
eillance inseparable from freedom, a sovereign judgement inseparable fi.0111 tr~th.<br />
on seems completely subjected to this ambivalence, completely 'at a loss', as he<br />
about the missing copy of 'Notes on the State of Virginia'. Just as that missing<br />
1s bound to be 'mutilated however in it's freest parts' (Jefferson 1 S99.1:52f), so too<br />
s Jefferson seem to becoine most anxious at precisely the moments of his closest<br />
oximity to, and his deepest excitement over, Enlightenment.<br />
governmen tality<br />
s not, however, content to oscillate perpetually within this ambivalent and<br />
x~cal scene of Enlightenment and surveillance, of anxious excitement, of<br />
eedotn'. Devoted as he is to his vocation ofnation-state building, he works<br />
capture and render the light by which he is simultaneously watched and judged.<br />
uently, as persistently as this ambivalence resurfaces throughout his<br />
ce, so too does a meticulous for~nulation of its resolution. Consider, for<br />
tter Jefferson wrote to the Marquis de Lafayette in 1820 (20 Dec.)<br />
n 1899.X: 179-1 8 1 ). This exemplary speech act-in which a representative of<br />
responds to a representative of France about the way Europe strikes the U.S.<br />
both have been struck by the light of the Enlightenment--is shot through<br />
ornents of 'infelicity', or what J.L. Austin would call 'non-serious', 'parasitic',<br />
I-ordinary' interruptions of ordinary, direct communication. On the one hand,<br />
on declares that he knows just what is 'going on' in France and in the U.S.,<br />
fident tone which pervades the letter. And yet, in the process of trotting<br />
ny of the rhetorical conventions of Enlightenment discourse, Jefferson stages a<br />
drama in which the trope ofnational unity and power emerges to offer a coherent<br />
icitous resolution to the conflict among Enlightenment, European judgement,<br />
is letter to the Marquis, Jefferson attempts nothing less tharr the task of<br />
e Enlightenrxent. The letter has five general sections: first, Jeffeferson's<br />
his failing liealth (Jefferson 1899.1: 1-9); second, Jefferson's concerns<br />
he state of affairs in France, and Europe in general (Jefferson I X90.1:9-26j; third,<br />
son's atternpt to reassure Marquis about conflicts between Spain and tlie 1J.S. over