Refounding Denied: Hannah Arendt on Limited Principles and the Lost Promise of Reconstruction

• Published date: 01 December 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231178867
• Author: Niklas Plaetzer
• Date: 01 December 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231178867

Political Theory

2023, Vol. 51(6) 955 –980

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/00905917231178867

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Article

Refounding Denied:

Hannah Arendt on

Limited Principles and

the Lost Promise of

Reconstruction

Niklas Plaetzer1

Abstract

This article argues that Hannah Arendt’s essay “Civil Disobedience” contains

a critique of white constitutionalism. A close reading of Arendt’s comments

on the failure of Reconstruction to durably found Black citizenship reveals

that the anti-Blackness of her account does not consist in ignoring the

racialization of constitutional order but, to the contrary, in a dismissal of

Black politics due to the limitations of a white constitutional heritage. In “Civil

Disobedience,” Arendt thus stood on the edge of an insight that she failed

to develop more fully: Black movements had brought to light the limitations

that racial domination places on the “augmentation” of America’s founding

principles. For Arendt, the notion of the “principle” is meant to mediate the

novelty of action with the durability of order. But to the extent that she

views American institutions as defined by the “inherited crime” of slavery,

feedback across temporal strata—between a principle in past, present,

and future—is structurally blocked. The symbolic whiteness of citizenship

undermines institutional durability, as it generates a crisis of constitutional

authority for all. Tracing the sources behind Arendt’s pessimistic vision, the

1Department of Political Science, Albert Pick Hall for International Studies, The University of

Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Niklas Plaetzer, Department of Political Science, Albert Pick Hall for International Studies,

The University of Chicago, 5828 S University Ave, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.

Email: nplaetzer@uchicago.edu

1178867PTXXXX10.1177/00905917231178867Political TheoryPlaetzer

research-article2023

956 Political Theory 51(6)

article demonstrates echoes between her account and the literature on

which she relied: Tocqueville; Stanley Elkins; and, possibly, W. E. B. Du Bois.

It concludes with a reading of Arendt’s commentary on Reconstruction

as the attempt to recover a lost moment of foundation, an unredeemed

promise of refounding.

Keywords

Hannah Arendt, “Civil Disobedience”, constitutionalism, Black politics, race,

whiteness

Introduction

In her essay “Civil Disobedience” (1970), Hannah Arendt rang the alarm

about “a constitutional crisis of the first order.” From an illegal war in

Vietnam to the “increasingly impatient claim to power by the executive

branch,” “chronic deception” of Americans by their representatives, and

“deliberate attacks” on free speech, constitutional authority had been pushed

to the brink (Arendt 1972a, 89, 93). In the face of these threats, Arendt made

the case for civil disobedience as a defense of republican institutions: what

appeared as rebellious transgression or criminality was, to the contrary, “quite

in tune with the oldest traditions of the country” and embodied the

Constitution’s spirit of founding. Her appraisal of civil disobedience culmi-

nates in the provocative call to not only envision civil disobedients as the true

spokespersons of constitutionalism but to take their action as the occasion for

a new understanding of political institutions altogether: “to find a recognized

niche for civil disobedience in our institutions of government” (p. 99).

But the second driver of constitutional crisis was not the outcome of

Nixonian executive overreach. Its sources were much older, and Arendt’s

essay oscillates between political commentary and historical meditation.

“Civil Disobedience” was published in The New Yorker on September 12,

1970, but Arendt first elaborated her thoughts for the New York City Bar

Association Centennial Convocation, “Is law dead?,” held on April 30 and

May 1 of the same year. Her effort to bring constitutional history to bear on

a tumultuous present resonated with the aims of the event. As conference

organizer and Dean of Yale Law School Rostow (1971, 11) suggested, the

legal profession needed to confront the past anew at a moment when “our

institutions are being tested with a vehemence that the nation has not seen

since the Civil War.” For Arendt, likewise, recent “social storms, and the