Henri De Boulainvilliers and the Interpretation of Racism

Abstract

The late 17th C.-early 18th C. French aristocratic thinker Comte Henri de Boulainvilliers has emerged as a central figure in the historical narrative told by several contemporary political theorists regarding the origins and transformations of modern racism. This paper seeks to resituate Boulainvilliers, not only to demonstrate his importance historically, but also to illustrate the manner in which he has become the ground for conflicts of interpretation between competing contemporary accounts of racism derived from Foucauldian, Arendtian and liberal traditions. It is argued here that an historically-attentive reading of Boulainvilliers demonstrates certain inadequacies in several of these contemporary approaches on two main counts. First, historically, Boulainvilliers refutes any account that does not contextualize the emergence of race theories in the 18th and 19th centuries in relation to earlier discourses of European colonialism and; second, philosophically, he problematizes theories of racism that continue to take up the question in terms of a failure to properly universalize the category of the human with its attending rights and dignities within an ideal modern State form.