18
back upon himself, it separates him from all that bothers and afflicts him.”
59
In a well-known
passage describing the philosopher’s response to witnessing a violent attack, Rousseau writes:
His fellow-man can be murdered with impunity right under his window; he has only to put his
hands over his ears and argue with himself a bit to prevent nature, which revolts within him, from
identifying him with the man who is being assassinated. Savage man does not have this admirable
talent, and for want of reason he is always seen heedlessly yielding to the first sentiment of
humanity.
60
For Rousseau, “reason divides men; only sentiment reliably unites them.”
61
The claim here is not
that reason is negative or unnecessary; rather, Rousseau is making a more subtle point about the
limitations of rationality.
62
In the second Discourse, we are reminded that one of the most
distinguishing features of modernity has been its ability to justify and intellectualize war,
inequality, and other forms of political violence.
For Rousseau, identification not only generates a sense of mutual recognition and affirmation
— it is capable of becoming a form of resistance. In The Government of Poland, for example,
identification becomes a strategy of opposition and self-determination. Pessimistic about the
ability of the Polish people to resist Russian domination, Rousseau asks: How can the Poles
remain “free” even under Russian occupation? Rousseau’s solution is that the Polish people
“establish the republic in the Poles’ own hearts” so that they can maintain a cohesive identity no
matter what their oppressors may do.
63
“You cannot possibly keep them from swallowing you,”
writes Rousseau, “see to it, at least, that they shall not be able to digest you.”
64
In Chicano political discourse, efforts to produce a similar sense of internal cohesion and
oppositional politics can be seen in the rhetorical use of familia and hermanidad:
It is important that every Chicano student on campus be made to feel that he has a place on that
campus and that he has a feeling of familia with his Chicano brothers.… Above all the feeling of
hermanidad must prevail so that the organization is more to the members than just a club or a
clique.
65
59
Rousseau, Second Discourse 132.
60
Rousseau, Second Discourse 132.
61
Orwin 299.
62
As Orwin notes, “It is not merely that Enlightenment thought overestimates the possibilities of reason, but that it
underestimates those of sentiment.” Orwin 299.
63
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Government of Poland, trans. Wilmoore Kendall (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Company, 1985) 10.
64
Rousseau, Poland 11.
65
El Plan de Santa Barbara reprinted in Youth, Identity, Power 198.
Convention