The Relevance of Royce

Seven Race, Culture, and Pluralism

Franz Fanon argues that a particular logic is at the center of Western processes of colonization and calls for different starting point. This paper argues that Royce’s logic provides resources to think about Fanon’s claim and points toward an alternative logic that can contribute to the processes of decolonization and liberation while affirming a pluralistic conception of self-determination and sovereignty. Royce’s logic, informed by pragmatism and idealist logic of the late 19th century, focuses on agency and its implications for ordering relations, including those of exclusion and inclusion that are at the heart of Fanon’s critic of colonialism. The result is a logical theory that recognizes the risks and problems of any effort to order human lives and has the potential to recognize the ways in which European-descended philosophies have served as weapons to carry out colonization and oppression. Fanon advocated practices of liberation that affirm a pluralism of particular peoples and lands and the possibility of interaction across porous boundaries, Royce provides an alternative logic compatible with such a vision.