Race, Revolution, and Bergsonism in the Americas

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This panel is organized according to several main themes of the New York 2016 LASA Congress. First, each essay takes a transnational approach toward the relevance of Henri Bergson's philosophical influence throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Given that a great deal of contemporary historiography of the Americas has disregarded the relevance of Bergson’s work, we propose that philosophers and historians analyze Bergsonism as an intellectual current that has helped shape the development of social and political identities emerging after the decline of positivism and beginning with the onset of the Negritude and Indigenismo movements of the early 20th century. Second, each presentation addresses the ways in which specific philosophical ideas have shaped culture in both regional and global ways. This methodological focus, we contend, offers a multipolar perspective that connects various intellectual exchanges in a broader perspective than those of other North-South and South-South interactions. We thereby interpret the study of Bergsonism in the Americas as a way to address a common set of problems that has affected differing geopolitical contexts in both Europe and the Americas throughout the first half of the 20th century. Such problems include, for example, tensions between competing metaphysical and biological conceptions of the human animal, and how such philosophical tensions have led to theoretical and practical implications regarding race.

Sub Track

• History and Historiography

Chair

• Andrea J Pitts, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Individual Presentations

• Racial Becomings: Materialism and Bergson in Spanish America, 1870-1920 - Adriana I Novoa, University of South Florida

• The Spectacle of Belonging: Henri Bergson’s Comic Negro and the (Im)possibility of Place in the Colonial Metropolis - Annette Joseph-Gabriel

• Bergsonism in Post-Revolutionary Mexico: Antonio Caso’s Theory of Aesthetic Intution - Andrea J Pitts, University of North Carolina, Charlotte