#Spinoza’s Droom [7]

Droomscene uit Perle Hessing, Scenes from Spinoza’s Life (1977) -
zie onder het hele schilderij

 

Begin 2016 had ik een reeks blogs over de droom van Spinoza: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. En ook het blog van 14-12-2015: “Spinoza & ras” gaat in op Spinoza’s droom.

Onlangs bracht Michael A. Rosenthal zijn gedegen artikel over dit onderwerp naar academia.edu:

• Michael A. Rosenthal, "The Black, Scabby Brazilian". Some thoughts on race and early modern philosophy.” In: Philosophy and Social Criticism, 31 (2), 211-221 (2005) [PDF op academia.edu]

Abstract: When Spinoza described his dream of a ‘black, scabby Brazilian’, was the image indicative of a larger pattern of racial discrimination? Should today’s readers regard racist comments and theories in the texts of 17th- and 18th-century philosophers as reflecting the prejudices of their time or as symptomatic of philosophical discourse? This article discusses whether a critical discussion of race is itself a form of racism and whether supposedly minor prejudices are evidence of a deeper social pathology. Given historical hindsight, we may read such discussion of race in early modern philosophy as a sign of the incipient struggle against prejudice, a sign that we can recognize and use in the struggles of our own time.

Zie ook

• Willi Goetschel, “Spinoza's Dream.” In: The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, Vol 3, January, 2016 [PDF bij BookSC]

Abstract: In 1664, in a letter to a friend, Spinoza shares a dream he had of a “black, scabby Brazilian.” At the historical moment of a fierce race among Europe’s colonialpowers, when the Amsterdam Jewish community’s vested interests in the Dutch colonial enterprise have reached a formidable status, Spinoza’s dream reflects an early awareness of the postcolonial predicament. The dream figures this awareness as the moment of the awakening—inseparable from the imagining—of the modern subject. Although the dream has been discussed with regard to its significance for understanding the role of the imagination for Spinoza as well as the issues of freedom, slavery, and question of race, the paper addresses the specifically postcolonial juncture that Spinoza’s dream and the letter marks. Spinoza’s dream figures the philosopher’s awakening to the precarious status of the postcolonial subject position as recognition of the constitutive significance of the postcolonial constellation for the formation of modern awareness.

 

 Perle Hessing, Scenes from Spinoza’s Life (1977)