Liberte Sans Frontières: Third Worldism, Neoliberalism and the Question of “Difference”

Jessica Whyte (University of Western Sydney)

Philosophies of Difference Series #2

Thursday, 25th August 2016, 6:00PM - 7:30PM

Room 9.3.6A, Building 9, RMIT University (cnr Bowen & Franklin)

Liberte Sans Frontières: Third Worldism, Neoliberalism and the Question of “Difference”

Jessica Whyte (University of Western Sydney)

Abstract

This paper examines the political think tank Liberte Sans Frontières (LSF), established in 1984 by the French leadership of Médecins Sans Frontières. Billed as a research centre devoted to the problems of development and human rights, LSF’s first colloquium, “Third Worldism in Question”, revealed its political bent. In the face of what it framed as ideologically-induced blindness, LSF proposed to analyse development and human rights problems unrestrained by [what it termed] “the notion of a (non-existent) unified third world”. This struggle over the term “Third World” was  intimately bound up with a struggle over the political project best suited to responding to postcolonial global inequality, and over the politics of universalism.  Defenders of Third Worldism stressed that the unity of the Third World, such as it was, was premised neither on a shared culture nor on a racialized nationalism but on a form of political solidarity. At the LSF colloquium, critics argued that the rationalism underpinning Third Worldism made it inattentive to the play of real differences. For Pascal Bruckner, who delivered the colloquium’s keynote address “Third World, Guilt, Self-Hate”, Third Worldism was a “pure idea” that neglected cultural difference in the name of political commonality. By attributing all evils to profit and money, Bruckner argues, the interests of the oppressed were cast as identical and the “weight of tradition” was underplayed. In this paper, I examine the significance of this affirmation of “difference” in the humanitarian attack on Third Worldism. I argue that this strand of thinking had a much longer lineage in the neoliberal defenses of colonialism promulgated by figures like Peter Bauer. Moreover, I show that in attacking Third Worldism and its campaign to challenge the neo-colonial structure of the global economy, the humanitarians of LSF made common cause with the neoliberals in the Reagan administration.

Bio

Jessica Whyte is Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Social Analysis at the University of Western Sydney, Australia and an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow. Her research interests include the history and theory of human rights, sovereignty, and contemporary European philosophy, particularly Agamben and Foucault. Her work has been published in a range of fora including Law and Critique; Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism and Development; Theory and Event; and Contemporary Political Theory. Her book Governing Homo Economicus: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism will be published by Verso in 2017. She is currently working on an Australian Research Council DECRA project: “Inventing Collateral Damage: The Changing Moral Economy of War.”

*free, no registration required*

WHEN:

6PM-7:30PM, Thursday 25th August 2016

WHERE:

Building 9, Level 3, Room 6A

RMIT City Campus (cnr Bowen & Franklin)

ABOUT:

The Philosophies of Difference group (PoD) are a Melbourne-based group of scholars working in continental philosophy and interested in problems that have been marginal to the dominant traditions of Western thought. We engage with approaches including: critical philosophy of race, decolonial thought, feminist theory, Indigenous studies, philosophy of disability, philosophy of nature, queer theory and trans philosophy. The second PoD seminar series will consist of weekly seminars beginning in August 2016. We especially welcome participation and contribution from women, people of colour, and other minority groups. 

Philosophies of Difference is supported by the Communication Politics and Culture Research Centre at RMIT. 

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