Troubling, The U.S.

Declaration of
Independence

by Qadri Ismail - on 07/04/2015

Modern, recent, European, the concept of the human being as a rights

bearing subject dates only from around the seventeenth century. This in
itself isnt troubling. (Europe has given us good things: cricket, paan and
kokis from the countries that colonized us alone.) But the celebrated texts
of its earliest articulations, like John Lockes Second Treatise of
Government(1689), produce the human not uniformly, homogeneously, but
in heterogeneous, dissymmetrical categories. The U.S. Declaration of
Independence (DOI, 1776) resonates with Locke; despite famously asserting
that all men are created equal, it qualifies that statement, distinguishes
between those gifted rights, subject, and the unequal, those without, other.
Such anomalies may seem anachronisms today, rectified by the U.
N.sUniversal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognizes all humans,

including women, as so bestowed. However, the de jure and de facto do not

coincide: the global rights regime iterates the older, eurocentric structure,
repeats it with a difference. It differentiates, to use Gayatri Spivaks terms,
the powerful, that right, subject, from the wronged, powerless, object.
(Summarily, perhaps too quickly delineated: fully human, the subject to this
frame possesses reason, autonomy, sovereignty, enjoys agency; also
human, the object nevertheless gets acted upon; incompletely human, the
other lacks cardinal attributes of the subject.)
Take, as example, the International Crisis Group. It would usually issue a
series of reports on a country if the elected but dysfunctional government
could barely pass legislation, recently exceeding four years to enact a
budget. If its police routinely, publicly kills unarmed members of a minority
with impunity, at an average of three every day so far this year, a minority
that disproportionately fills its jails. The same jails empty of its wealthy
bankers widely accepted as corrupt. If its politicians, in a system of
brilliantly legalized bribery, accept jobs upon retirement in the corporate
sector after performing favors for that sector while in office. And if its
state violates human rights across the globe, colossally, again with
impunity. Untroubled by the record, however, the ICG refuses to impugn the
U.S.
Righters cannot wrong (even when they do); the wronged never right.
Phrased differently, to emphasize the inextricability of the concepts, writers
cannot wrong; the wronged, not permitted to write, not quite. Narrate,
testify, yes; beg, plead, certainly; cry copiously (writers will provide
tissues); draw meaning, conclusions, issue authoritative reports, not on
your life. Bottom line: only righters author.
A subsequent essay will address the contemporary transnational
enforcement of human rights, led by the United States, arguably the most
egregious global violator of such rights this century. As portent, lets read a
piece of writing, the U.S.s founding document, DOI. Keeping in mind that a

text, any text, gets marked by forces, disciplines, institutions usually

unconscious to its author/s. Reading finds a text different from its staging,
self-presentation. In this case, that all men actually disqualifies,
eliminates many. DOI says more, and therefore less, than we, or at least
liberals, have been trained, convinced, interpellated into believing.
A troubling, profoundly eurocentric text, one that informs, continues to
shape our moment, it requires close attention. At stake: is the concept of
the human that founds, grounds rights properly universal or hierarchical?
*
A social and a political document, consisting of many interwoven levels,
these two in particular intersect awkwardly. The latter detaches, the former
attaches: DOI affirms separation, dissociation from Britain while reaffirming
connection, association. It desires the dissolution solely of political bands
that bind the two countries; ties of consanguinity, blood, fraternity
between inhabitants of these States and our Brittish [sic] brethren will
survive George Hanovers tyrannical record outlined in the text. (Commonly
known as King George III, Hanover, an exalted breed, superior subject
requires no surname for identification.) Such a formulation finds blood
thicker than slaughter, produces inhabitants of the U.S. as exclusively of
British (European) ancestry. We would call them white. Which begs the
question of the status of others without a filial relation to Britain, Africans,
then enslaved, and Native Americans, categories of humans DOIadmits,
implicitly and explicitly, but cannot accommodate.
Raising the problem of race, such othering should trouble the reader
committed to equality. After all, many of the U.S.s founding fathers this
state apparently birthed itself without mothers actually owned, bought
and sold human beings as property. Thomas Jefferson, DOIs author-in-chief,
the U.S.s third president, even raped one, Sarah Sally Hemmings,
repeatedly, for years. (Locke held stock in a company that trafficked in
humans, commonly known as the slave trade.)

*
The assertion of fraternity, of course, raises the question of gender. When
juxtaposed with the claim that the vested, gifted are men, DOI vindicates a
confraternal quarrel, a bout between boys. But not all. The text privileges a
certain class of the U.S. male population as especially wronged by Hanover.
He may have destroyed the lives of our people in general; nevertheless, a
segment, the righters, suffers such oppression disproportionately.
DOI seeks to let Facts be submitted to a candid world of Hanovers many
inequities totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation, including
inhibiting commerce, extorting taxes and limiting trial by jury. (Candid also
means white. Like Ive said before, you can learn a lot merely by checking
the dictionary.) One frame would find this true. To another, that reads
closely, attends to class and gender, such acts could only trouble those
wealthy enough to trade, pay levies, qualified to serve on
juries. DOI proclaims all men equal. It produces some as more aggrieved
than others. To right these wrongs this particular group, the
Representatives of the united States of America, the writers, signers, both
object, of repression, and subject, of resistance, mutually pledge to each
other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor, oppose Hanover with
manly firmness.
The poor, unfortunate, dishonorable, not quite manly, implicitly lack the
capacity to so pledge. The text says more than its words in a literal reading.
One reads closely, carefully, precisely in order to divulge the more and the
less. More or less.
*
The rights bearing subject, then, emerges in DOI severely qualified: white,
male, rich, honorable, he is the man, gentleman, of quality. Or, since every
subject produces its other, not female, subaltern. The text hierarchizes the
white. (According to the U.S. National Archives, At the time of the first
Presidential election in 1789, only 6% of the population white, male

property-owners was eligible to vote.) While doing so, producing self and
other within the group even as it consolidates the group, one may wonder:
does it also oppose the white, a whole, an inside, to others outside? As
hinted above, it does.
The renowned statement requires citation in full: We hold these truths to
be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. In this articulation, (hu)man rights,
beginning with life, are an endowment, gift of God.
Another qualification: the subject is Christian.
DOI invokes the divine four times. The first, following Genesis, the opening
book of the Bible, as omnipotent: author of nature, including men (and,
presumably, women, though as afterthought). The second, bequeathor,
benefactor: endower of rights, which emerge as theological, not natural or
contractual. The third, decider-in-chief: Supreme Judge of the world,
whose protection (four) the U.S. invokes, relies upon against Britain given
the rectitude, justness of its case, cause. Making God the cheerleader-inchief of (the establishment of) the United States.
Authorized, countersigned by God Himself, DOI is not a secular text.
*
All men, then, amounts to less than all men; some whites, as noted, being
lesser men. Lesser still, DOI finds non-whites barely human. The last entry
in that list of Facts, inequities alludes to further enemies: He [Hanover]
has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to
bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages,
whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages,
sexes and conditions.
Domestic insurrections refers to rebellions by Africans transported to
slavery in the U.S. (and elsewhere). DOI finds them domestic, inside its
territory, threatening, the enemy within. By an incredible twist of the facts,

it evicts Native Americans outside; or, rather, to the border of our frontier,
the enemy without. Staging himself as native, of the land, the import
deports the Native, vindicates appropriation, theft, passes their land as
ours. The white consolidates itself against two groups of non-whites.
The founding document of the United States of America, a settler colony
named after a European, produces the Native American eurocentrically
(mis)named Indian as savage, an inferior breed, despicable class of
human that, like todays terrorist, disregards the rules of war. A weapon of
mass destruction, this beast kills women, children and men, old and young,
poor and rich without distinction, mercy.
Opposed to the subject, the man, this nonChristian, uncivilized,
dishonorable, mass murdering, terrifying, barely human entity cannot be
entitled to rights, beginning with life.
The founding text of the U.S. portends, perhaps even promises the
decimation of an entire group it others as unmanly.
*
Grounded upon many hierarchies, the Declaration of Independence refuses
to be read as a text of human emancipation. That in itself should trouble
those who celebrate it. Its buttressing the structure of the contemporary
global human rights regime should trouble us all.
Posted by Thavam