Political Theory Research Group seminar series: 9 Mar 2016

Photo: MILNER MOSHE
“To shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, doing away with oppressor and oppressed at the same time”. This provocative defence of violence as not only compatible with but essential to the liberation of the colonial subject – made in the Preface to Frantz Franon’s Wretched of the Earth at the height of the Algerian war of independence – has long coloured the reception of Jean-Paul Sartre’s conception of Europe. On the strength of this Preface alone, critics have charged Sartre with irresponsible Third Worldism, a wilful ignorance of the achievements of Europe, and a failure to care for his own continent. Whilst not denying that Sartre’s oeuvre contains imprudent and reckless judgements, Hugh McDonnell attempts to rehabilitate this image of Sartre through a skilful reconstruction of his wide-ranging statements about Europe throughout the course of his life. For McDonnell, Sartre’s idea of Europe is best understood according to the metaphor of a knot, bringing together four related but interweaving elements around a core, existentialist philosophy of freedom. Continue reading →