Left History (E-Journal - York University)

Drapeau, Thierry

129
© Left History 
16.1 (Spring/Summer 2012)
BOOK REVIEWS
Laurent Dubois and Julius S. Scott, eds., Origin s o f  the Black Atlant ic
(New York: Routledge, 2010).
Since the past twenty years or so, the Black Atlantic world has become an effer-
vescent field of  research with a transdisciplinary reach stretching across history,
cultural studies, literature, and so on. In the field of  history specifically, scholars
have sought to reintroduce the ideas and experiences of  people of  African
descent at the core of  the historiographical tradition of  the Atlantic world.
Published in Routledge’s book series “Rewriting Histories,” Origins of  the Black
Atlantic is another major intervention of  that sort. To be sure, the two editors,
Laurent Dubois, specialist of  the French Atlantic, and Julius S. Scott, renowned
in Atlantic history for his ground-breaking doctoral dissertation “The Common
Wind: Currents of  Afro-American Communication in the Era of  the Haitian
Revolution” (Duke University, 1986), explicitly situate the book within the
“Atlantic approach” as pioneered by both, albeit differently, C. L. R. James
(1938) and Paul Gilroy (1993); this is an approach that seeks “to comprehend
how the enslaved and formerly enslaved imagined, reformulated, and trans-
formed the political and legal contexts in which they lived” (1).
I should mention at the outset that Origins of  the Black Atlantic is not a
collection of  original works. But this does not make it any less interesting. Far
from it! Indeed, Dubois and Scott have brought together fourteen contributions
(from scholarly articles to book chapters), of  which most can now be considered
cardinals in the field of  Atlantic history (such as, for instance, pieces by David
Barry Gaspar, Ira Berlin, Julius S. Scott, John K. Thornton, and Eric Williams).
The collection is divided into four parts. In Part One, the chapters
grapple with the issue of  mobility and connection among people of  African
descent, who were not isolated but highly mobile agents, conscious of  them-
selves and of  broader contexts of  international relations. In Chapter 2, for
example, Richard Sheridan demonstrates how the leaders of  the Jamaican slave
insurrection scare of  1776 were “informed by the progress of  the American
Revolution and may have been influenced to revolt by its ideological content as
well as the opportunity afforded by the removal of  a military unit” (29). The
most fascinating piece of  the section is certainly Julius Scott’s chapter, which
portrays how “[t]he movement of  ships and seamen not only offered opportuni-
ties for developing skills or escaping, but provided the medium of  long-distance
communication and allowed interested Afro-Americans to follow developments
in other parts of  the world” (69). This chapter is particularly interesting for it
maps out a maritime “masterless underground,” crucial for inter-island coopera-
tion among slaves during the Age of  Revolution.
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Part Two seeks to illuminate the broader context of  the Black Atlantic
from biographical point of  views. Here, Ira Berlin’s famous piece on the making
of  Atlantic creoles stands out for its analytical breakthrough and, incidentally, it
grounds the two other chapters of  the section in a common perspective. This is
especially true in Chapter 7, where Emily Clark and Virginia Meacham Gould
explore how the intergenerational transmission of  Roman Catholicism among
free Black women in New Orleans from 1727 to 1852 resulted in a “religious
creolization,” characterized by “the expansion and formalization of  the leader-
ship role of  black women in religious instruction and benevolence” (161).
The three chapters that constitute Part Three look at the Black Atlantic
from an Africanist perspective. The focus here is on how African cultural tradi-
tions shaped, as much as they were shaped by, Atlantic-significant, local contexts,
such as the role of  Islamic tradition in the 1835 Muslim uprising in Bahia, stud-
ied by Joao José Reis, and the practice of  oath-taking among the Guianese and
Jamaican Maroons, studied by Kenneth Bilby.
Part Four nicely brings together the threads of  the book into the theme
of  “Insurrection and Emancipation in the Atlantic.” Matt Childs’s chapter ana-
lyzes the connection between the 1812 Aponte Rebellion in Cuba and the
Haitian Revolution, and shows how Cuban slaves and free Blacks utilized the
image of  the slave revolution to catalyze their movement and legitimate their
actions against the colonial elite. Exploring the role of  rumours not only as
means of  communication but also as agent practices, Steven Hahn’s essay shows
how during the 1865 Christmas insurrection in the American South “white
landowners turned rumours of  land redistribution into harbingers of  insurrec-
tion so as to reassert their local prerogatives…” whereas “…freedpeople used
the rumours to bolster their own bargaining positions” (352). In other words:
rumours should be seen as part of  class struggle.
The merit of  Origins of  the Black Atlantic lies in the second life it gives to
contributions which, now grouped together, generate a strong and coherent
comparative historical account on Black people in the Atlantic world. Were there
reservations about the book, they would be more about what is missing in it
than what it offers. For example, it would have been welcomed to have a section
of  primary accounts exposing how Black people themselves viewed the Atlantic
world. People like Toussaint L’Ouverture, Olaudah Equiano, David Walker, and
so many others, left written testimonies that, in and of  themselves, were first-
hand fragments of the origins of  that Black Atlantic. But beyond this small criti-
cism, we have to applaud Origins of  the Black Atlantic for what it already is: a clas-
sic book of  Atlantic history. It should be classified in an “Atlantic history,” sec-
tion “from below,” next to, say, Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, but not
too far from the “Black Radical Thought” section, where W.E.B. Du Bois,
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Richard Wright, Claudia Jones, Cedric Robinson, and Robin D.G. Kelley, to name
only a few, would have certainly much to say on the origins of  the Black Atlantic.
Thierry Drapeau
York University
Lyman L. Johnson, Workshop of  Revo lut ion: Plebe ian Buenos Air es and
the Atlan tic  Wor ld,  1776-1810 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011).
Workshop of  Revolution concludes with notable success Johnson’s lengthy work on
the late Spanish colonial artisans of  Buenos Aires. In this book, he reconstructs
the lives of  many artisans and of  more widely defined plebeian groups. He
traces the attempts of  plebeians to organise guilds and analyses the failure of
guilds compared with those elsewhere. He studies the urban labour market enu-
merating the multiple ways slaves were utilised in a non-plantation economy. He
addresses many other cognate topics touching on popular consumption and
standards of  living: diet, prices of  consumer goods, housing and rents, monetary
wages and real wages. The book divides into two parts; the first addresses the
period 1776-1805, and the second the run-up to the independence struggle from
the British military occupation of  June-August 1806 to the aftermath of  the rev-
olution of  25 May 1810. The first part of  the book deals with the politics of
guild formation and presents most of  the data on popular living standards. The
second deals principally with the expansion of  public sector spending through
the formation and consolidation of  the urban militia. Johnson argues that the
populace played a central political role in the revolutionary period but he also
addresses the activities of  various political leaders. He credits the plebeians with
an autonomous role in resisting the British in 1806, in repulsing the second
British attack in mid-1807, and in triggering the May Revolution of  1810 itself.
He notes the dashing of  popular aspirations in late 1811 when an attempted
mutiny by the plebeian dominated Patricios Regiment was quashed. 
Striking novelties of  the book include Johnson’s analysis of  housing in
Buenos Aires and his work on slaves. He depicts an urban environment in which
extraordinarily high rents prevailed. He provides many illustrations of  the hiring
out of  labour by small slave owners and the ubiquitous functions of  slaves as
imports of  slaves climbed steeply from the 1790s. Johnson has collected impres-
sive data on prices and wages and digested a mass of  archival material to create
fascinating anecdotes on people of  high and low social status. I learned a great
deal about the purchase and hiring out of  slaves and about the rumoured slave
revolt of  1795; I learned more too about the relations between critical figures of
the revolutionary era like the Francophile Santiago Liniers and his nemesis
Martín de Álzaga representing pro-Spanish interests. The book is the most
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Laurent Dubois and Julius S. Scott, eds., Origins of the Black Atlantic (New York: Routledge, 2010).

Milloy, Jeremy

peacekeeping as a part of  Canada’s national identity. These themes are central to
this book, but there is much that can be done to investigate these issues in more
detail. It will be for others to pick up where Warrior Nation leaves off  to help us
better understand the production, dissemination and reception of  messages
about war and peace, particularly after the end of  World War Two in Canada. 
The audience McKay and Swift seek to engage on their polemical road
is not limited to foreign policy experts, though. The authors recognize the public
nature of  memory and commemoration and the dissonances that can exist
between what individuals remember and what their government wants them to
recall. All Canadian historians are called upon to recognize and challenge those
right-wing historians who have gained prominence in the nation’s media and
who have helped initiate changes in how Canada’s past is commemorated. It is
far too easy to dismiss the ideas of  ‘new warriors’ as being unrepresentative of
current historical thinking or to laugh at their simplistic and macho conceptions
of  the past. Warrior Nation properly refutes these right-wing conceptions of
Canada’s history as factually flawed while noting that efforts must be made to
reduce the alarming influence of  this martial conception of  history.
Because this book wears its politics so proudly on its sleeve, it does
leave itself  open to dismissal from those it seeks to attack. In particular, the
choice of  the term “Caesarist” to describe the current Harper government
seems misplaced (25). Though they make a case for rising authoritarian tenden-
cies by Harper, the book also offers convincing evidence that the Harper gov-
ernment is trying to situate Canada firmly within the sphere of  both the past
British and current American Empires. If  this is so, then Harper can aspire to be
little more than a provincial governor rather than a “Caesarist.” Ultimately, the
subject matter of  Warrior Nation is so important that one hopes more conserva-
tive historians, as well as those who are inclined to support McKay and Swift’s
initial premises, will be willing to read all the way through to the end. 
McKay and Swift have taken on an expansive topic and a host of  histo-
rians and government officials in Warrior Nation. Theirs is a call to action that
deserves to be widely read and thoroughly discussed. 
Colin McCullough 
York University
Reinhold Kramer and Tom Mitchell, When the S ta te  Trembled:  How A.J.
Andrews and the Ci tizens ’  Committee  Broke the Winn ipeg Genera l S tr ike
(Toronto: University of  Toronto Press, 2010).
When the State Trembled: How A.J. Andrews and the Citizens’ Committee Broke the
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Winnipeg General Strike is that rare and welcomed book which uses new evidence
and provocative arguments to reignite the historiography of  a major event.
Reinhold Kramer and Tom Mitchell draw on the previously unstudied corre-
spondence of  Citizens’ Committee leader A.J. Andrews, particularly Andrews’
communications with federal Minister of  Justice Arthur Meighen. The study
transforms our understanding of  how the strike was defeated. While traditional
accounts have placed Meighen and the Canadian state at the centre of  the
repression of  labour and the left, Kramer and Mitchell demonstrate how
Andrews and his circle united Winnipeg capital behind their leadership and then
choreographed the response to the strike, frustrating attempts at mediation and
donning the mantle of  the state to lend legitimacy to crushing the strike with
violence and disciplining its leaders with criminal charges and deportations.
Kramer and Mitchell document capital’s manipulation and usurpation of  the
state in such detail that it is surprising that their analysis of  the evidence turns
on ideology, citizenship, and the state, while downplaying what their evidence
reveals were the crucial dynamics of  the strike – class conflict and coercion. This
error mars what is otherwise a salutary contribution. 
Kramer and Mitchell’s crucial intervention is to drag the Citizens’
Committee of  1000 out of  the anonymity of  smoke-filled rooms and spotlight
this “bashful winner.” The Citizens, in this retelling, take shape as more than
reactionary bosses. The authors skillfully illustrate the real concerns of  the
Citizens and many ordinary Winnipeggers about the collapse of  their society,
linked to the international context of  rebellion. Their handling of  the radical
context is occasionally clumsy (a photo caption that says the IWW “had few
links to Canada” is certainly puzzling), but they do an excellent job of  outlining
some of  the liberal ideology proffered as justification for the elite response to
the strike. In taking seriously the motivations and actions of  this “combination
of  masters,” Kramer and Mitchell make a major contribution to our understand-
ing of  how the political dominance of  capital has been reproduced in Canadian
history, an understanding we sorely need. 
However, while their explication of  the Lockean ideology of  the mas-
ters is a valuable contribution to intellectual history, the authors rely too heavily
on ideology to explain the defeat of  the strike. They demonstrate well how the
Citizens used discourses of  King, Britain, and individual freedom to counter the
strikers’ class-based narrative, trying to seize the middle away from opponents
they constructed as a gang of  dangerous immigrant radicals. However, the focus
on this ideological combat obscures two important points. First, while appeals to
freedom had some impact (the authors credit it with expediting the removal of
“By Permission of  the Strike Committee” signs posted by bread and milk deliv-
ery), it was the Citizens’ class position that allowed them to advance these argu-
ments, and it was nevertheless material force and coercion, specifically the events
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of  Bloody Saturday, that secured the Citizens’ victory over the strikers. The
material thrust of  capital’s counterattack is thus underemphasized. Furthermore,
far from teaching us about the strike as the response of  that nebulous force, “a
liberal order,” we see how the capitalists of  Winnipeg discarded liberalism, jetti-
soning all notions of  British justice, the separation of  the class interest and the
state, and individual liberty in their usurpation of  the state to crush the strike. In
the end, the liberal ideology of  the Citizens boils down to Marx’s dictum that
“the ruling ideas are the ideas of  the ruling classes;” they are evidence of  power,
not power’s source.
This is the missed opportunity of  When The State Trembled: despite the
authors’ premises, they account not for the triumph of  ideology or the response
of  that nebulous creature, a liberal order, but for the ability of  capital to usurp
the legitimacy of  the state in order to defeat a working-class challenge. Yet the
authors persistently overlook the dimensions of  class conflict or capitalism in
their analysis, preferring instead to argue that what is revealed by the General
Strike’s repression is primarily about the state and civil society, languages of  rule,
and discourses of  citizenship. Of  course, it is that perceived separation between
the “economic” and the “political” that is a key strategy of  capitalist domination,
and one used effectively by the Citizens’ themselves. Ideology and state forma-
tion are important, but it is crucial to couple our understanding of  the uses of
ideology with an appreciation of  the material force of  class conflict, dimensions
often understated by recent constructions of  Canada as a liberal order.
Nevertheless, Kramer and Mitchell have written a book of  enormous value that
will no doubt receive the highest honour available to a work of  history: to be
drawn on and debated for years to come. 
Jeremy Milloy
Simon Fraser University
Peter Campbell, Rose Henderson: A Woman f or the Peop le (Montreal:
McGill-Queens University Press, 2010).
Historians of  the Canadian Left are well acquainted with communist leaders like
Becky Buhay, with early architects of  the Cooperative Commonwealth
Federation (CCF), like Agnes Macphail, and with female parliamentarians like
New Democrat Grace MacInnis. Yet, had we had lived through the Great
Depression, particularly in Ontario, the name we might have first associated with
the cause of  socialism was that of  Rose Henderson. Henderson led a remarkable
life, much of  it devoted to politics, writing, and organizing for feminist, socialist,
labour, and peace causes, which to her were never distinct, but all intimately
linked. Thanks to Peter Campbell, Henderson has been rescued from the ‘conde-
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Reinhold Kramer and Tom Mitchell, When the State Trembled: How A.J. Andrews and the Citizens’ Committee Broke the Winnipeg General Strike (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010).

Simmons, Christina

ple can only be taken so far.
Campbell’s claim for Henderson’s significance in his introduction seems
almost unnecessary, and at times also off  the historiographical mark. He sees the
book challenging the “claim made by Canadian historians that being a maternal
feminist...involved the depoliticization of  women,” yet many feminist historians
recognize the deeply political nature of  maternal feminism – even if  they are
critical of  it. Similarly, to argue that Bettina Bradbury “shifted” feminist scholar-
ship away from Joan Sangster’s focus on “elite women” (4) to a new emphasis on
“ordinary women,” suggests political and scholarly differences between two
socialist-feminist historians which did not really exist. Campbell’s biography of
Henderson is so important, so very well done, that it needs little historigraphical
justification. Henderson was, on one hand, a unique, extraordinary, politically tal-
ented woman whose life is interesting in its own right. She was also a political
actor among others, part of  wider efforts to build resistance to capitalism, gen-
der oppression, and war. We are in great debt to Campbell for reconstructing an
extraordinary life neglected for too long.
Joan Sangster
Trent University
Marc Stein, Sexual Injust ice :  Supr eme Court  Deci si ons from Griswold t o
Roe (Chapel Hill, University of  North Carolina Press, 2010).
Clive Boutilier, a Canadian immigrant to the United States who had had homo-
sexual experiences, was refused naturalization in a 1967 Supreme Court decision,
Boutilier v. the Immigration and Naturalization Service on the basis of  a 1952 immigra-
tion law permitting exclusion of  those “‘afflicted with psychopathic personality’”
(61). He was deported to Canada in 1968 after being severely injured and perma-
nently disabled when a car struck him on a New York street in what may have
been a suicide attempt. Moved by this tragic and little known story, Marc Stein
has investigated the contradiction between Boutilier’s treatment and the powerful
narrative of  sexual liberalization that has dominated accounts of  five significant
U.S. Supreme Court decisions between 1965 and 1973, especially Griswold v.
Connecticut (birth control), Memoirs of  a Woman of  Pleasure [Fanny Hill] v.
Massachusetts (obscenity), Loving v. Virginia (interracial marriage), Eisenstadt v. Baird
(access to birth control for the unmarried), and Roe v. Wade (abortion). He argues
that the narrative of  liberalization ignores how the Court’s decisions upheld “a
legal regime of  heteronormative supremacy” (21) and liberalized only reproduc-
tive and marital, not broadly sexual, rights. Hence, the Lawrence v. Texas decision
of  2003 that invalidated sodomy laws was not a culmination but a reversal of
earlier views.
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This book is very clearly written and comprehensively researched,
addressing the above six Supreme Court decisions and dissents of  1965-73 in
detail and a few others more briefly: records of  justices’ internal discussions;
backgrounds, rhetoric, and reasoning of  lawyers making the cases; and responses
of  mainstream and gay and lesbian media, as well as of  lower court judges, to
the Court’s decisions. Some repetition occurs as we return to the cases in each of
the three parts of  the book, organized around the Court, the advocates, and the
media response. (An appendix with dates and basic details of  each important
case would have been helpful.) But this organization usefully articulates Stein’s
main points - that the actual texts of  the decisions were heteronormative, that
advocates also mostly failed to argue for universal sexual freedom and equality,
and that the media and often even lower court judges read the decisions selec-
tively as “liberal,” while “forgetting” both Boutilier and conservative elements of
other decisions.
Stein shows the texts of  decisions and justices’ discussions centred on
freedom and privacy for married couples while sustaining sexual regulation gen-
erally. Hence Griswold invalidated Connecticut’s anti-contraceptive law but also
noted the state’s right to prohibit adultery or homosexuality (30-32). Advocates
also used heteronormative language, did not challenge broader state controls,
and often resorted to the politics of  respectability, defending Boutilier and other
clients as decent, gender-appropriate, and citizen-like (20). Stein’s account often
has a critical edge, although he acknowledges that advocates sought to protect
individual clients by actually winning the cases and that their arguments were
limited by dominant heterosexual assumptions. More egalitarian discourses did
exist, but they were confined to minority libertarian, left, and homophile organi-
zations that lacked significant influence; lawyers feared using them would harm
their cases. Perhaps studying the court led him to overemphasize the cultural
power of  law vs. that of  the social and cultural environment. 
Most fascinating is Part III, where Stein demonstrates how different
popular conceptions of  the Court’s “liberalism” were from the actual, more con-
servative, texts of  the decisions. Not only mainstream but also the more critical
gay and lesbian media sometimes assumed rights to (marital) privacy or equal
protection (for the single and married) asserted in the “liberal” cases implied
rights for gay men and lesbians (228). More surprisingly, sometimes lower courts
also did, as in 1971, when “a federal judge in New York granted the naturaliza-
tion petition of  a Cuban-born homosexual, citing Griswold to support the claim
that ‘it is now established that official inquiry into a person’s private sexual habits
does violence to his constitutionally protected zone of  privacy’”(238). The nega-
tive import of  the Boutilier decision was forgotten because it disrupted this narra-
tive of  liberal progress.
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Stein attributes these “misreadings” to the desire of  some to promote
the sexual liberalization that they then read into the Supreme Court’s words. He
also notes what I think is a major reason – that “sex” remained so culturally
entwined with reproduction and marriage that decisions we see now as specifi-
cally heterosexual could be more easily read then as leading to a general “sexual
freedom.” We might see the Court’s heteronormative assertions as part of  a
defensive effort to preserve heterosexist structures then beginning to fracture.
Contradictions between the Court’s words and popular interpretations vividly
illustrate that “truth” is not singular; perhaps those who got it wrong in Stein’s
view are in the end at least equally right.
Sexual Injustice is extremely valuable. It reminds us of  the deeply-rooted
heteronormative thinking of  the Supreme Court, reveals the complexities of
legal change in relation to the wider society, and, not least, tells us the important
story of  Clive Boutilier.
Christina Simmons
University of  Windsor
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Marc Stein, Sexual Injustice: Supreme Court Decisions from Griswold to Roe (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2010).

Bausch, Katharine

political realities. All this is well done. But I search in vain for useful generalisa-
tions about their music and music-making, for all the abundance of  generic and
stylistic descriptions. The subject-matter of  Silverman’s book could have afford-
ed an ideal opportunity for scrutiny of, and reflection upon, music as a cultural
practice, to take one example. I can imagine employing theory in potentially reve-
latory ways here: looking at Rom praxes from the contrasted perspectives of
Pierre Bourdieu and Alasdair McIntyre, for instance, so that the spotlight swings
from politics to ethics and back again; or allowing Rom music-making to raise
broader questions about the relationship between determinate texts (notation is
irrelevant here) and improvisation, or about the status of  performance (and per-
formers) as components of  history. The singularity of  this whole topic, posi-
tioned at an angle to both traditional music and popular music, positively begs
for some such treatment, in my view. But I may be guilty here of  the cardinal sin
of  functional judgments: criticising a book for failing to achieve what was never
in its sights. In the end, Silverman’s book is what it is; and it is immensely useful.
Jim Samson
Royal Holloway, University of  London
Victoria W. Wolcott, Race,  Riots ,  and Rol ler  Coaster s :  The Strugg le  Over
Segregat ed Recr eat ion in  Amer ica (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2012).
Race, Riots and Roller Coasters explores the efforts to desegregate American public
recreation sites from the 1920s to the 1970s. Wolcott demonstrates how recre-
ational sites in both the North and the South were important battlegrounds in
the 20th century African American freedom struggle. She highlights how the
desegregation of  recreational sites fits into the more explored stories of  housing,
transportation, school, and service desegregation, as well as the histories of  key
civil rights organizations, but she also demonstrates why it is important to under-
stand how a study of  recreational desegregation subverts our traditional under-
standing of  amusement in the United States and the civil rights movements. She
states that “popular memories of  mid-twentieth century urban amusements are
replete with nostalgia and rarely contain references to segregation” and that full
access to public and recreational sites was “central to the freedom struggle
because it is itself  a central freedom” (4, 232).
Beyond adeptly demonstrating the importance of  recreational desegre-
gation in the United States, Wolcott makes several other significant interventions
in our understanding of  the African American freedom struggle. Her study con-
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tinues the deconstruction of  a false de jure/de facto or South/North binary that
has persisted in the study of  the 20th century struggle for black freedom. She
recounts, for instance, the legal barriers that kept African Americans from enjoy-
ing recreational sites in Northern cities. In the 1940s, for example, the Congress
of  Racial Equality fought a battle to desegregate the White City roller rink in
Chicago, which used private membership cards to deny African Americans
access to their facility, thereby using a legal exception to keep their facility segre-
gated. Wolcott also recounts several instances where de facto segregation persist-
ed at Southern recreational facilities even where de jure segregation was never
written in law, such as in San Antonio where African Americans in swam segre-
gated pools because of  custom, not formal, written law. While this by no means
diminished the force of  the segregation in San Antonio, it does complicate our
understanding of  the role of  law in maintaining Jim Crow.
Wolcott’s study also draws attention to the role of  youth and the con-
struction of  racialized bodies during the black freedom struggle, adding to grow-
ing subfields in American historiography. She proves how the power of  segrega-
tion and the resistance to breaking it down was directly related to the perception
of  a recreational space as a potential opportunity for white and black bodies to
come into direct contact. Several amusement parks, for example, desegregated
entrance to their parks long before they were willing to desegregate their pools
and dance halls. Fears of  racialized bodies, as well as the violence perpetrated on
black bodies, form a central part of  this analysis.
Wolcott also establishes the key role that young people played in efforts
to desegregate recreational facilities in the United States and how national ideas
about youth and juvenile delinquency shaped the conversation about recreation
in America. In perhaps one of  the most revealing arguments of  the book,
Wolcott unravels the relationship between justifications for de jure and de facto
segregation, white flight from urban recreation, the popular memory of  urban
decay, and fears of  racialized juvenile delinquency. In so doing, Wolcott presents
an important counter-narrative to the persistent view of  the appeal of  suburban-
ization. She argues that “there was no retreat into the private world of  the subur-
ban home, but rather a retreat from the urban leisure spaces many perceived as
dangerous” because of  the increased access to these newly desegregated spaces
by young African Americans (224).
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This book, which continues Wolcott’s rigorous work in the history of
the black freedom struggle, is an important addition to our understanding of  the
fight for desegregation in the 20th century. It begins to meet Wolcott’s call to
increase our awareness of  “the connection between freedom and fun” (233). It
also presents historians with an opportunity to expand on the narrative of  segre-
gation in American history. Wolcott points to several instances where other
racialized groups were drawn into the fight for spaces of  amusement, such as
Puerto Ricans and Mexican Americans, which offer the possibility of  exploring
racism, segregation, and the power of  white supremacy beyond the black/white
binary.
Katharine Bausch
York University, Toronto
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Victoria W. Wolcott, Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: The Struggle Over Segregated Recreation in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).

Gaudet, Kathleen

tors across periods. Coan claims a current “era of  tolerance,” a stand many
would contest, particularly concerning immigration. 
“It’s been a wonderful life,” reported Faye Lundsky who at five years of  age
emigrated from Russia with her mother in 1898. At the same age in 1991, Marie
Gonzalez came from Costa Rica with her family. “I love this country,” she stated
in Congressional testimony. From escaping the pogroms in Russia to enduring
the rollercoaster ride of  passage of  the proposed DREAM Act, these stories
chronicle “ordinary people who will go to extraordinary lengths in their quest for
freedom . . . for a taste of  what many of  us take for granted.” (25) Peter Morton
Coan wisely lets the immigrants tell their stories in their own words and, despite
some organisational and perceptual challenges, provides an outstanding collec-
tion of  immigrant stories.
John Bieter
Boise State University
Axel Körner, Polit ics  o f  Culture in  Liberal Italy :  From Uni f ic at ion to
Fasci sm (New York: Routledge, 2009). 
One might approach Politics of  Culture in Liberal Italy with the logical assumption
that it is, as the title suggests, an analysis of  the development of  a political and
cultural identity in Italy from the end of  the Risorgimento to the first years of
Fascism. However, while Körner states that “this book is concerned with the
relationship between cities and the nation, and the attitudes of  those cities
towards modernity, as articulated through municipal cultural policy” (3), much of
the work is a close assessment of  the formation of  cultural and politics in one
city, Bologna, which Körner considers paradigmatic of  the rest of  the nation.
Even if  he justifies his choice to perform a case study of  Bologna as a means
with which to understand “l’Italia delle cento città” (5) in the introduction, the title
is misleading in two ways: besides the geographical issue, there is the cultural
one, since the majority of  Körner’s analysis of  culture focuses on musical per-
formance and, to a lesser extent, architecture, largely neglecting other major
spheres of  intellectual and artistic output. The result is useful for our under-
standing of  specific aspects of  the culture of  liberal Italy, but does not provide a
complete overview of  the characteristics of  the period or issues named in the
title.
Because of  the great number of  topics covered, the volume does not
lend itself  to an exhaustive summary. I therefore limit the following to some
chief  points. After the introduction, the book is divided into three parts:
“Political and Social Conflict,” “Writing the Past,” and “The City, the Nation and
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European Culture”. In Part I, Körner provides context for the rest of  his study,
stating “a study on politics of  culture at a municipal level has to examine the
social composition of  the local political elites and their economic background”
(21). After describing the transition from the Bologna of  a Papal State to that of
a united Italy, he discusses the role of  Bologna’s theatres, most notably the
Teatro Comunale, in the process of  political and cultural change underway in the
city. Important throughout is the idea that opera was fundamental in the forma-
tion of  Italians. The second part looks at “Italy’s nineteenth-century medieval
revival and (…) the rediscovery of  its pre-Roman civilisations” (87). Körner con-
tends that not only the notabili, but also, and more significantly, the professional
middle class, made a concerted effort to write a national history. He attempts to
show how “different versions of  the past were openly contested in Bologna after
Unification” (160). Part III examines issues such as urban space and toponymy.
Also in this section are chapters on the monarchy (with special focus on
Margherita of  Savoy) and Bologna’s position as “the Italian capital of  mod-
ernism” (261). The popularity of  Wagner figures prominently as evidence that
Bologna was increasingly modernist and cosmopolitan.
Politics of  Culture in Liberal Italy is affected by issues that sometimes
make it difficult to follow and absorb Körner’s arguments, at least in the first
reading. For example, his overly detailed analysis, though interesting, detracts
from the book’s readability. The organization is almost overwhelmingly complex.
Perhaps most troubling is that some of  Körner’s generalizations and hypotheses
remain under developed and/or are presented as hard fact. For example, he
asserts in the introduction that “in the case of  Bologna the city’s politics of  cul-
ture also became a political target for those fighting against the liberal institu-
tions and democracy, explaining why Bologna was the first city in which the
Fascists ended democratic rule, two years before their March on Rome” (5), not
adequately accounting for other explanations. Indeed, he only explicitly deals
with the rise of  fascism in Bologna in any amount of  detail in two pages of  the
introduction and three pages of  the epilogue, mentioning factors such as agrari-
an forces in a manner that is much too cursory considering his stated (and lofty)
goal of  offering “a new perspective on the origins of  Fascism in Italy” (5).
This is not to say that the book is without merit. Indeed, its examina-
tion of  the political and cultural implications of  opera in Bologna is detailed,
well-researched, and often fascinating, providing a valuable interpretation of
what the development of  the music industry says about the political and cultural
movers of  the time. Nonetheless, Körner has created a text that is full of
engrossing facts, references, and digressions, but does not sufficiently answer
fundamental questions arising from the title.
Kathleen Gaudet
University of  Toronto
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Axel Körner, Politics of Culture in Liberal Italy: From Unification to Fascism (New York: Routledge, 2009).

Schmidt, Ingo

Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage, eds., Rethink ing  the Pol i t i cs  of  Labour
in Canada (Halifax, Winnipeg: Fernwood Press, 2012).
This book is about the things unions do when they are not organizing, bargain-
ing, walking picket lines, or handling grievances. It is about their political efforts
to improve the conditions under which they pursue their core business of  the
collective sale of  labour power to employers. The book comes in three parts.
The first gives a theoretical explanation of  the historical development of  unions
and their relations to the state and employers in Canada and introduces the
notions of  business- versus social movement unionism as a framework for actual
and potential politics of  labour. The second part focuses on electoral politics in
English-Canada and Québec, discusses strategic voting, i.e. union endorsement
of  non-social democratic parties, and electoral reform. The third part, finally,
looks at the collaboration of  unions with various non-union groups and organi-
zations in the field of  extra-parliamentary politics. Respective chapters are devot-
ed to women, aboriginal peoples, immigrants and the work with environmental-
ists and anti-poverty activists. The editors call for “more radical and militant
political strategies” (16) and there is no indication that their co-authors disagree
with this. Thus, the book aims at going beyond scholarly inquiry into the field of
political intervention. A brief  discussion will show that achieving this goal would
have required going a few steps further than the authors actually did.
For a start, in her own chapter co-editor Stephanie Ross points at the
limitations of  the business- vs. social movement unionism dichotomy and insists
that the key to any successful union strategy is their anchoring in the workplace.
Considering the tendency in some progressive union circles to treat community
activism as a substitute for the decline of  union density and membership engage-
ment, this is an urgently needed reminder. Unfortunately, neither her nor any
other chapter of  the book raises the question which organizing and mobilizing
strategies might be as successful in today’s world of  global networks of  produc-
tion and distribution as industrial unionism was in the good old days of  the
assembly line. In this book, the politics of  labour are strictly confined to the
relations between unions and non-union actors even though one might say that
the internal life of  unions is political, too, and that the “working-class politics”
(16), which the editors also propagate, would require a complementary overhaul
of  internal structures and of  the relations between unions, parties, and civil soci-
ety groups. Yet, even though the book contains recurrent references to class pol-
itics none of  the authors took the time to explain what the working class looks
like today and what future class politics could possibly be. Rather than exploring
class and class struggle as drivers of  economic and political developments and
situating unions within this context, most authors in the book take neoliberal
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globalization as an independent variable to which unions have to adjust. Framing
the debate about the politics of  labour in this way is self-defeating because it
doesn’t leave any room for unions, or other workers’ organizations, to be an
active force of  change. And it points at another missing piece in the book. If
globalization, neoliberal or other, is taken as a point of  reference one would at
least expect some thought about the relations between the Canadian and other
national labour movements, if  not about the potential for a truly international
movement. The silence on this matter is particularly striking because debate
about these issues figured prominently on the agenda of  progressive unionists
and intellectuals prior to the Great Recession and the ensuing phase of  stagna-
tion and instability. This brings me to my last point. Economists consistently
point at the correlation between employment levels and bargaining power and
employers confirm to this point by aggressively trying to roll back labour stan-
dards that unions had negotiated prior to the crisis. Seen from this angle, unions
appear as a ‘sort of  Sisyphus’, to use Rosa Luxemburg’s term. If  this is the case,
the equation of  politics of  labour with a subset of  union practices renders such
politics powerless since the economic crisis undermines union power in the
workplace without which it doesn’t have much clout outside the workplace
either. Therefore, politics of  labour should be redefined in a much broader way
including any efforts workers, employed and unemployed, could possibly make
to improve their living and working conditions. What overall assessment follows
from this critique? Two thumbs up for drawing a thorough balance sheet of  the
politics of  labour, meaning: unions, in Canada today. Plus three question marks
behind the rethinking of  these politics; one concerning the unmaking and
remaking of  the working class, one regarding the relations between workers in
Canada and elsewhere, and one behind the possibilities of  building strong work-
ers’ movements in times of  economic crises.
Ingo Schmidt
Athabasca University
Randall Wakelam, Cold War Fighter s :  Canadian Air cra f t Procurement ,
1945-54 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011).
I first read Randall Wakelam’s study of  Aircraft procurement in Canada when it
was in its original form as a Masters manuscript. Indeed, I used his work to pro-
vide historical context in my own subsequent work. As the book’s roots are a
Masters thesis, the study is fairly short, but this does not undermine its success as
a solid description of  the events of  Canada’s ambitious quest to design and build
its own fighter aircraft into the 1950s. The additional time and effort Wakelam has
put into the manuscript has yielded, as part of  the Studies in Canadian Military
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Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage, eds., Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada (Halifax, Winnipeg: Fernwood Press, 2012).

Pelz, William A.

Tudi Kernalegenn, François Prigent, Gilles Richard, Jacqueline Saincliver,
eds., Le PSU vu d ’en bas:  Réseaux soc iaux, movement po l it ique,  laborat o-
r ies  d ’ id ées ,  années 1950- 1980 (Rennes, France: Presses Universitaires
de Rennes, 2009).
Le PSU vu d’en bas makes an important contribution to the literature on the twen-
tieth-century European Left. In the whirlwinds of  French politics, parties have
risen, collapsed and reinvented themselves. To comprehend French politics,
indeed to understand France, it is necessary to carefully examine the ebb and
flow of  various party formations. While more powerful and enduring groups on
the Left, like Socialists and Communists, have attracted a fair amount of  scholar-
ly scrutiny, less long lasting organizations like the United Socialist Party (PSU)
are often relegated to footnotes.
The PSU had a brief  lifespan even by French standards. Formally
established in April 1960, the remnants of  the United Socialist Party officially
dissolved the group almost three decades to the day later, in 1990. Despite this
short thirty-year existence, the PSU, as this excellent collection of  essays illus-
trates, was a remarkable experiment. Passing through its ranks were numerous
activists whose personal political commitment would outlast the party that
trained them. 
The studies gathered in this volume demonstrate that the importance
of  the United Socialist Party went beyond the group’s electoral weakness or ulti-
mate collapse. A convincing case is made that careful study of  the PSU reveals
an organization that made any number of  contributions to the molding of  the
French Left. By looking at specific issues, like its support for women’s rights, and
regional influence, such as in Brittany, this book provides texture and nuance to
the discussion of  this unique organization. As the subtitle suggests, the PSU was
certainly a laboratory for ideas.
With an emphasis on grassroots activity, the PSU was markedly differ-
ent from their better known leftist rivals. This approach allowed the party to
bridge the gap that had existed between the traditional secular, if  not anti-cleri-
cal, left and radicalized Catholic activists. As a collection of  separate studies, this
volume is the start and not the end of  the possibilities presented by histories of
the PSU and how they impacted left culture, thought and practice. Nonetheless,
all the contributions presented here are of  high quality and, unlike so many com-
pilations of  articles, form a very clear and readable whole.
To read this book is to gain any number of  insights into the transfor-
mation of  French politics from the time of  DeGaulle into the latter part of  the
twentieth century. Even when the PSU raised issues they were unable to solve,
like the difficult problem of  immigrant rights, they pointed to vital concerns that
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needed to be addressed. This skillful work should be read by all those interested
in French politics. Moreover, the book implicitly raises a crucial question, all too
seldom asked: What do we mean when we say the word “socialism”?
William A. Pelz
Institute of  Working Class History (Chicago)
Ralf  Hoffrogge, Richard Müller:  Der Mann hinter  der November revo luti on
(Berlin: Karl Dietz Verlag, 2008).
Biography has long been a tool used by historians to highlight the nuances of
societal change. Of  course, this form suffers from the danger that a form of
hero worship will lead the scholar into the pitfall of  the “great person theory of
history.” Fortunately, this work avoids this problem while remaining sympathetic
to the subject discussed. Hoffrogge has authored a brilliant biography of
Richard Müller (1880 – 1943), German radical and author. Although now known
only to professional historians, he and his comrades in the Berlín Revolutionary
Shop Stewards were important leaders of  mass strikes in the years 1916-1918 (9)
and later in the events of  the German Revolution. After a brief  career as a radi-
cal workers’ leader, Müller left politics and faded into the mists of  historical
amnesia. With this book, the mists have parted and Müller’s significance is again
revealed. In addition to his political activism, Müller authored a number of  sig-
nificant works of  history such as Vom Kaiserreich zur Republik (1924). Curiously,
the importance of  his written works has until now not spared him from histori-
cal obscurity.
When discussed at all, the November Revolution is often presented as
an event without thought or planning. This does a great disservice to the many
unsung radicals like Müller who had laid the groundwork for a workers’ revolu-
tion. An independent thinker, he began politics in the German Social
Democracy (SPD) and later moved into the German Communist Party (KPD).
He was never a docile follower of  either, opposing the SPD support for World
War I and later refusing to join the KPD’s early incarnation Spartaksubund
because of  his fear of  ultra-left elements overly enamored with an armed seizure
of  power (97). Later, he would join the KPD with many of  his former comrades
only to be politically crushed within a few years by the vicious political infighting
and meddling by the Comintern.
Within the Revolutionary Shop Stewards, Müller attempted to develop
the strategy of  initiating action as union representatives of  industrial workers
while clandestinely forming an illicit revolutionary organization in response to
wartime repression. Although they were key players in the events of  1916-1919,
this group has often been overlooked by scholars. Ralf  Hoffrogge has authored
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Tudi Kernalegenn, François Prigent, Gilles Richard, Jacqueline Saincliver, eds., Le PSU vu d’en bas: Réseaux sociaux, movement politique, laboratories d’idées, années 1950- 1980 (Rennes, France: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2009).

Jean-Numa Ducange, La Révolution française et la social-démocratie: transmissions et usages politiques de l'histoire en Allemagne et Autriche, 1889-1934 (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2012

Bargain, Alban

The Construction of a Prehistory: The Austrian and German Social Democrats and the French Revolution

Harvey, Megan

torical development of  the business elite, the book demonstrates the ways in
which its ideas, one may even say its culture, must be challenged if  the subordi-
nate classes are to achieve true popular rule and, perhaps even a new type of
society. Eine Klasse für sich is of  great value and should be widely studied. An
English translation would be useful to facilitate wider discussion and debate.
If  there are faults with this study, they spring from this book’s
strengths. That is, in producing a concise and stimulating study that is appealing
to the intellect, Fischer has left readers wishing for more. It can only be hoped
that this is but the first chapter in the author’s valuable examination of  Chilean
society.
Dr. William A. Pelz
Institute of  Working Class History, Chicago
May Chazan, Lisa Helps, Anna Stanley, & Sonali Thakkar, eds., Home and
Native Land:  Unsett l ing  Multi cul tural i sm in  Canada (Toronto: Between
the Lines Press, 2011).
Home and Native Land: Unsettling Multiculturalism in Canada is an ambitious collec-
tion. Emerging from a 2007 conference titled From Multicultural Rhetoric to Anti-
Racist Action, this work brings together junior and senior scholars from a range of
academic disciplines, as well as artists, social organisers, and activists. Inside we
find manifestos, reflective pieces on performance, art, and organizing, as well as
more conventional academic essays. The diversity of  contributions nicely illus-
trates the laudable intention to speak from multiple perspectives and to a broad
audience.
Divided into four overlapping sections, the collection’s overarching
objective, as suggested in the title, is to ‘unsettle’ Canadian multiculturalism. For
the editors, ‘unsettling’ means disrupting multiculturalism’s status as settled
(accepted, commonsense), as well as its settling functions (as a discourse that set-
tles meaning and space, securing the state’s claims to territory, resources, and
adjudicative power). Together, the chapters demonstrate that while multicultural-
ism has never been a stable entity, its meanings have nonetheless become “sedi-
mented” over time (3). They show how it has been debated and contested since
its inception, and how it continues to be made and remade in ever new and
changing contexts.
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The collection is self-consciously positioned to intervene in, and simul-
taneously historicize, the recent resurgence of  public debates over the supposed
success or failure of  multiculturalism that have been playing out in numerous
national settings since 2001. Indeed, one of  the most interesting features of  this
volume is the awareness, more apparent in some chapters than others, of  the
risks involved in further developing a strong leftist critique of  multiculturalism
(as policy and discourse) at a moment in which it seems at once deeply
entrenched and unnervingly vulnerable. In this regard, the editors’ metaphor of
unsettling sediment is an accurate characterization of  what the volume does and
does not do. Its authors are working from deep inside the problems of  Canadian
multiculturalism, doggedly critical but largely unable – or, in other cases, not yet
willing – to extricate themselves from its logics or abandon its potential.
Part one, Unsettling Multiculturalism, is the bulkiest, most directly philo-
sophical, and perhaps least accessible to a non-academic reader. Part two, Labour,
seeks to “contextualize and unsettle multiculturalism within the realities of  global
labour migration” (8). In Part three, Lands, multiculturalism “is a story of  the
nation that settles not only identity and meaning, but also land and space” (9).
The focus on indigeneity in this section highlights how multiculturalism’s proj-
ects and tropes “breathe life into the colonial relations upon which Canadian
identity and nation are settled” (9). In Bodies, the final and in many ways most
grounded and engaging part of  the collection, the authors demonstrate how
“bodies are central to the ways that multiculturalism is both enacted and experi-
enced” (10).
Throughout, we become re-acquainted with the vocabulary most com-
monly associated with multiculturalism: the politics of  recognition and reconcili-
ation (Coulthard, Galabuzi, Egan, Cameron), liberal inclusions and exclusions
(Walcott, Clarke), and negotiations of  identity in a multicultural paradigm
(Bertram, Bakht, Walton-Roberts). As one might expect from the proceedings of
a conference on anti-racism, the collection tackles head-on the ways in which
multiculturalism often “silences discussions of  race and racism” (7) by re-center-
ing race in analyses of  multiculturalism and explicitly naming race where it is
most active. In short, the collection offers its readers a diversity of  vantage
points from which to consider the state of  Canadian multiculturalism.
In many ways, Home and Native Land is well positioned to offer a bit of
something for everyone, and the editors should be commended for producing a
work that is so ambitious in both form and content. Taken as a whole, however,
the advanced reader may be better equipped to make use of  the more academic
pieces, which assume significant background knowledge of  the philosophical
bases and existing criticism of  Canadian multiculturalism. Here and elsewhere,
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there is need for a stronger editorial hand. What is an excellent analysis of  the
state of  multiculturalism in the introduction appears in short form in most of
the subsequent chapters in a way that seems unnecessarily repetitive. Finally,
while the diversity and inclusivity prioritized in this volume is important, the
chapters do not hang together as well as one would like. Such issues notwith-
standing, the ideas presented in this collection should be taken up and engaged
by Left History readers who are invested in leftist political critique in Canada.
Megan Harvey
University of  Victoria
Adrienne Shadd, The Journey  fr om Tol lgat e  t o Parkway:  Afri can
Canadians in Hamilt on (Toronto: Dundurn, 2010).
The Journey from Tollgate to Parkway: African Canadians in Hamilton by Adrienne
Shadd explores a city quite familiar to historians of  Ontario. This book, howev-
er, is an attempt to move the experiences of  African Canadians from the foot-
notes to the centre of  historical scholarship (20). The title reflects the symbolic
journey of  the city’s Black community from when Julia Berry was the well-
known operator of  the tollbooth around the mountain in the 1880s, to the nam-
ing of  the Lincoln Alexander Parkway in 1997 in honour of  the country’s first
Black MP. From the first known Blacks in the province to present-day activists,
the reader is introduced to hundreds of  Hamilton’s African Canadian women
and men in a intriguing study of  labour, community, and social change.
The first five of  eight chapters cover the period prior to the twentieth
century. Shadd’s meticulous research of  this early period is this study’s most
compelling feature. The discussion begins in the Eighteenth-century with a thor-
ough examination of  slavery in Upper Canada. The complexities of  emancipa-
tion are revealed through a balanced analysis of  the lives of  both enslaved peo-
ple and the colonial elite, particularly slave owners. A combination of  published
advertisements, reports of  rebellion, official government records, and slave nar-
ratives are used to uncover the gradual move towards the Emancipation Act of
1833.
The period from 1833 to the turn of  the century is discussed through
highlighting the diverse experiences and circumstances of  Blacks in Hamilton.
Shadd effectively challenges the dominant narrative that the Black population in
the nineteenth century was made up almost entirely of  fugitive slaves who
escaped through the Underground Railroad. She features prominently the stories
of  Blacks who had lived in freedom in the United States before arriving in
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May Chazan, Lisa Helps, Anna Stanley, & Sonali Thakkar, eds., Home and Native Land: Unsettling Multiculturalism in Canada (Toronto: Between the Lines Press, 2011).

ers. Lack of  copyright protection facilitated the profusion of  French works in
the United States, and publishers of  texts with provocative titles like Michelet’s
could sell twenty thousand copies in the first month. Michelet provoked both
admiration and criticism when he advanced the idea that women were invalids
physiologically, but exalted by their spiritual power. His Du prêtre, de la femme et de
la famille, translated as Spiritual Direction and Auricular Confession in 1845, took on a
decidedly anti-Catholic cast when it pitted the Catholic confessor as a rival for
authority with the male head of  the household. During dinner conversations, the
priest’s invisible, regressive presence was blamed for preventing wife and daugh-
ters from embracing the patriarch’s progressive views.
Michelet’s ideas contributed to a cult of  domesticity that held that
women’s natural sentiments of  love, sympathy, and compassion were best culti-
vated in the tranquility of  the domestic sphere. The convent was imagined to be
diametrically opposed to that sphere, and few incidents created a greater interna-
tional outcry than that of  Sister Barbara Ubryk, a nun held captive, naked, shiv-
ering, and covered with excrement in a convent in Cracow in 1869. Verhoeven
brilliantly analyzes the parallels between the convent atrocity genre, so familiar in
France, and the Indian captivity genre in the United States, and explains why
both resonated so powerfully. He notes how Ubryk’s story bolstered the cult of
domesticity and the power of  patriarchy by underscoring the humiliation and
deprivation that women experienced in convents and the dangers that they faced
in the outside world.
There are many dimensions to the transnational exchange of  anti-
Catholic ideas, including the opportunities that people on both sides of  the
Atlantic took to reflect upon French or American exceptionalism. Verhoeven’s
genius is in revealing how anti-Catholic literature voiced fears both about
encroachments on men’s freedom in the political sphere and about encroach-
ments on their privilege in the home. Within this book, with its straightforward
title and modest format, lie treasures of  insight and detail that exceed the scope
of  this short review.
Lindsay Wilson
Northern Arizona University
Tiqqun. This is  no t a Program, trans. Joshua David Jordan (Cambridge:
Semiotext, 2011).
This is not a Program consists of  two essays: “This is Not a Program” and “A
Critical Metaphysics Could Emerge As a Science of  Apparatuses.” Although the
two works address distinct issues, they both aim to draw conclusions from the
failure of  the revolutionary left. This Is Not a Program is not and does not claim
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to be a piece of  scholarly work. The two essays originally appeared in 2001 in
the second issue of  Tiqqun, a short-lived journal whose name has also been used
as a collective pseudonym for a group of  French radical activists. Some of
Tiqqun’s essays were later reprinted by La Fabrique, an independent company
known for having published The Coming Insurrection. The latter, an anonymous
pamphlet calling for “all power to the communes,” received some publicity in
November 2008 when Julien Coupat, one of  the founders of  Tiqqun, was
charged for allegedly sabotaging the overhead wires of  a French train line (Comité
Invisible, 123).
Unlike The Coming Insurrection, Tiqqun’s essays require background knowl-
edge of  Italian history since 1968, Marxist theory, Foucaultian theory and one of
the author’s other works: Theory of  Bloom. The first, eponymous essay mainly
consists of  a status report on the “ultra-left” today (13, 23). In Tiqqun’s opinion,
only a part of  what he calls the “Imaginary Party” is truly anti-imperialistic.
Unfortunately, Tiqqun does not provide a clear definition of  the Imaginary Party.
In general, the author seems to understand it as synonymous with the “New
Left” (26).
As for the concept of  “Empire,” so central to the essay, the reader has to
pay close attention to the labyrinthine structure of  the analysis in order to under-
stand the author’s definition of  it. It is possible, however, to piece together an
idea of  what Tiqqun means by Empire. Inspired by Michel Foucault’s notion of
biopower, the author states that “[t]he unique thing about Empire is that it has
expanded its colonization over the whole of  existence and over all that exists”
(66). Empire thus comprises all officially sanctioned economic, social, political,
and cultural institutions and organisations (including political parties and unions).
As a result, anyone wanting to escape the influence of  Empire must refuse to
enter into its logic. The purpose of  the radical segments of  the Imaginary Party
should then consist in going under the radar of  Empire at all costs. 
Tiqqun’s stance explains his rejection of  Antonio Negri’s views. By
attempting to fight Empire with its own weapons and networks, the Negrists
have only succeeded in becoming “the idealist face of  imperial thought” (118).
Tiqqun thus advocates a return to the Foucaultian sources, implicitly presenting
the concept of  biopower as adequately describing the nature of  Empire in our
day and age. Since “[m]ilitancy and its critique are both in different ways compat-
ible with Empire, one as a form of  work, the other as a form of  powerlessness”
(132), the only solution lies in a complete refusal of  the system, a multiform
armed struggle.
To illustrate what he means by armed struggle, Tiqqun uses 1970s Italy as
a case study. Unfortunately, his philosophical analysis makes it difficult to distin-
guish digressions from the core of  the argument. Although readers knowledge-
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able about the “Years of  Led” might be able to make sense of  this part of  the
argument, many will be discouraged by the author’s arcane references to splinter
groups within the Red Brigades (19-20, 47-82) and the involvement of  the P2
Lodge in Italian politics (22, 99).
The second essay explores an aspect of  Empire called “apparatuses.”
Apparatuses are existential devices meant to keep human beings dependent on
Empire. They come in various forms, either concrete or abstract, such as “a cell
phone, a sedative, a shrink, a lover, a movie – all make for decent crutches pro-
vided they can be changed up often enough” (149). Tiqqun analyses those appa-
ratuses from the viewpoint of  the “Theory of  Bloom,” defined as “[a]n attempt
to historicize presence, to record, for starters, the current state of  our being-in-
the-world” (143). Apparatuses are related to the concept of  Bloom in that the
latter assesses the degree of  dehumanisation. 
Unlike the previous essay, “A Critical Metaphysics…” is meant to be a
programme or, rather, “the founding act of  S.A.C.S., the Society for the advance-
ment of  Criminal Science… whose mission is to anonymously collect, classify,
and share all knowledge-powers that may be of  use to anti-imperial war
machines” (135). Though more self-referential than “This is Not a Program,”
this essay will be more accessible to readers familiar with Heidegger’s concept of
Dasein and Marxist alienation theory.
As a whole, the book is immensely frustrating. At several points in the
text one expects to learn that Foucault stood Marx on his head just as Marx did
Hegel. This argument, however, remains buried under the book’s chaotic struc-
ture, as if  the author wanted to leave one sacred cow untouched. Nevertheless,
despite its lack of  formal and conceptual clarity, This Is Not a Program is worth
reading. Although its value certainly lies not in its capacity to break new scholarly
ground, it is a primary document in the making, a source that historians of  the
European left will find symptomatic of  the early twenty-first century.
Underneath its murky surface, Tiqqun’s book speaks for an orphaned generation
of  leftists looking for alternatives to classical Marxism and to a rusty New Left. 
Finally, the translation is brilliant and must have constituted a daunting
task. Although Jordan’s choice to translate the French pronoun “on” by
“THEY” is problematic from a grammatical point of  view, the successful adap-
tation into English of  Tiqqun’s language and style is in itself  quite a feat.
However, more explanatory notes and a preface would have made this transla-
tion more accessible to neophytes. 
Alban Bargain
York University
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