ANALOGOUS ANTINOMIES?
The mobilization of race as a factor comes into contradiction with universalist teleÂological horizons, such as those articulated by Christian doctrine and socialist ideÂology.
In both of these cases, the efficiency of grace and baptism or the revolution’s ability to give birth to an entirely new society ran up against a fixed idea that lives at the very heart of racial intuition, even when racism itself made a priority of atÂtacking degeneration through miscegenation. Although political programs that were racial in nature were carried out under the reign of both Christian societies and Marxist-Leninist systems, their racial theories remained heteronomous. In both cases there was therefore a contradiction, in some ways external, between the horiÂzon of universalist thought and a theory of immutability, as there was between the hierarchy of positions in the worldly city and the equality of the Heavenly city. In contrast, in the case of Nazism, if there was a contradiction, it remained in some sense internal, which is to say, internal to racism, because it combined a theory of racial immutability with the specter of racial degeneration.[373] This is the point where Nazism and Leninism-Stalinism become incomparable.Thus, Christianity and socialism share a common antinomy with regards to raÂcial thought. The spiritual and historical movement of the Church depends upon proselytizing, and from its very inception it engaged in missionary work and pracÂtices of conversion that aimed at transforming those who could hear the Gospel truth. Nothing should have been more foreign to this than a conception of man that postulated that he was unable to change. Soviet communism was to deliver Russian society to its destiny, in accordance with historical laws that would make a blank slate of the past, that of individuals as well as that of collectivities.
How then to admit that revolutionary change might fail to transform a number of these persons or collectivities? However, it is also true that no universalism can avoid this contraÂdiction. Islam does not escape such a constituent tension; no more so than the spirit and institutions of the French Republic did when they were confronted with the administration of colonial populations; or Constitution of the United States and the liberties it guaranteed, when it came to its dealings with African-American and NaÂtive American populations.Do the cases of the Soviet system and the respublica Christiana, in its RenaisÂsance Iberian incarnation, merit comparison, even if only to offer some mutual ilÂlumination? There are several reasons to think so. There are two approaches we might take. The first has to do with how much importance was given to an indiÂvidual’s family origins in determining what position he or she deserved to occupy in society and in political institutions. On this account, the Iberian societies of the Early Modern era and the Soviet system of the contemporary era created norms, acted in accordance with procedures, and forged ideologies that led to the naturaliÂzation of social and cultural differences. The second, which is no doubt more singuÂlar, concerns the role of slavery and forced (or militarized) labor as a tool for the transformation of human material that, because it remained stuck in a primitive and animalistic humanity, was judged unworthy of the Christian communion or socialist citizenship.
The convergence that I am suggesting here makes no claim to the discovery of a hidden inheritance: Leninism-Stalinism owed nothing to the history of the Iberian empires, and if it did, the means of transmission would have been so indirect that the labyrinth of mediations separating the two periods would render the search for elements transmitted from the latter to the former empty of any substance and all interest. However, examining the existence of racial politics within institutional and ideological frameworks that are antinomical with respect to racial thinking does indeed seem useful.
The discovery of racism inside of systems with universalist ambitions indicates that the political use of racial categories can be marked by a strong ambiguity. This is not to say that the fundamental antinomy that we can obÂserve in the two historical experiences discussed here is a substitute for a concluÂsion drawn from empirical research. On the contrary, it seems to me that it could serve as a theoretical starting point for any investigation into the implementation of racial politics. Assuming from the outset that racial politics can be established in societies whose ideological foundations aspire to universality, which leaves room for the ability of humans to change, will make it possible calmly to confront the contradictory signals given off by the empirical evidence collected by historical investigation into racial politics. (From this standpoint, the historiographic critique that sees its mission as identifying exceptions, normative incoherencies, cases of disobedience and fraud, as well as imprecision in the rules regarding race, in order to deny the racial character of these same policies seems hardly convincing.) It is self-evident that most racial policies are imperfect at a technical level and built upon shaky foundations and rife with contradictions at the ideological level. This does not mean that they are any less grounded in racial categories. Of course, the measures for domination and segregation mentioned above are always imbued by social, religious, cultural, and economic considerations that owe nothing to the laws of heredity but that can be combined with them, or with the way that they are unÂderstood to function at the time. Worse still, race should never have been able to grant either consistency or content to the order of Christian societies or socialist systems, neither in practice nor in theory. Thus, from the outset, an antinomy.4.