The Specter of the American Revolution
A Post-Nihilist Republic Seen Through Memory Assemblages
Keywords:
Cosmopolitics, Social Ethics, Eco-Socialism, Alternative History, RevolutionAbstract
This essay presents a reading of Shajara Bensusan’s Memory Assemblages alongside a dilemma in the U.S.A. over the meaning of its commonwealth. Across two and a half centuries, America’s republic has drifted toward despotism under the disguise of a liberal democracy. A consolidating class of monopolists compete to reign over the commons like landlords, while an increasingly indebted majority struggle through anti-socialist politics to find any mutually persuasive solution and aim. This essay capitalizes on Bensusan’s call to “reshuffle the archives” of memory as a method for imagining what may yet be added to this reality, bringing the unfulfilled republican ideals of the first American revolution to the forefront. The focus especially lies in restoring a notion of the commonwealth advanced by this revolution’s founding philosopher, Thomas Paine, and how this notion might re-contextualize the troubled social projects which followed.
References
Adams, John. “John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 15 November 1813.” The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, edited by Lester J. Cappon, vol. 1, University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1959, pp. 397-402. The Founders’ Constitution, University of Chicago Press https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch15s62.html
American Society of Naturalists. “A Technical Report on the Impacts of Federal Policies Since January 20, 2025 on Ecology, Evolution and Marine Science: Summer 2025 — Summer 2025 Survey Results". August 25, 2025, FirsthandAccounts.org, https://www.firsthandaccounts.org/impacts/2025-july-survey
American Jewish Committee. “What Is Trump's Proposal for Gaza?” AJC, March 5, 2025. https://www.ajc.org/news/what-is-trumps-proposal-for-gaza
Baker, Nick. “Anatomy of Bernie Sanders’ Socialism.” Socialist Action, January 14, 2020. Socialistaction.org/2020/01/14/anatomy-of-bernie-sanders-socialism/
Bensusan, Shajara (Hilan). Memory Assemblages: Spectral Realism and the Logic of Addition. Bloomsbury, 2025.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans R. Hurley, M. Seem, and H.R. Lane, Viking Press, 1977.
Congressional Budget Office. Distributional Effects of Public Law 119-21. August 11, 2025. www.cbo.gov/publication/61367
Federal Communications Commission. Gomez on Kimmel Suspension and Censorship. September 18, 2025. https://www.fcc.gov/document/gomez-kimmel-suspension-and-censorship
Gabbatt, Adam. “Why Have Top Democratic Leaders Failed to Endorse Rising Star Zohran Mamdani?” The Guardian, September 16, 2025. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/16/zohran-mamdani-democrat-endorsements-kathy-hochul
Gilens, Martin, and Benjamin I. Page. “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.” Perspectives on Politics, vol. 12, no. 3, 2014, pp. 564–581. Cambridge University Press.
Gonzales, Mike; Gorka, Katharine. “How Cultural Marxism Threatens the United States—and How Americans Can Fight It” The Heritage Foundation, November 14, 2022. https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/report/how-cultural-marxism-threatens-the-united-states-and-how-americans-can-fight
Hartig, Hannah. “Stark Partisan Divisions in Americans’ Views of ‘Socialism,’ ‘Capitalism.’” Pew Research Center, June 25, 2019. www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/06/25/stark-partisan-divisions-in-americans-views-of-socialism-capitalism/
Hedwig, Klaus. “Hegel On America”. Idealistic Studies, vole 27, no 1/2, Winter/Spring 1997, pp. 69–78.
Hegel, G. W. F. Lectures on the Philosophy of History, trans and ed. J. Sibree, Marxists Internet Archive, 1837. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/introduction-lectures.htm
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. 1651. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Jefferson, Thomas. The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 8 (Correspondence 1793-1798), quoted in Online Library of Liberty. https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/jefferson-warns-about-the-rise-of-an-anglo-monarchio-aristocratic-party-in-america-1797
Kallins, Lauren, and Emily Katz. “How Proposed Changes to Federal Safety Net Programs Could Affect the States.” National Conference of State Legislatures, May 2, 2025. www.ncsl.org/state-legislatures-news/details/how-proposed-changes-to-federal-safety-net-programs-could-affect-the-states.
Kaufman, Alexander C. “Trump Is Trying to Steamroll the Tennessee Valley Authority.” The Atlantic, July 15, 2025. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2025/07/trump-tennessee-valley-authority/683540/
King, M. L. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, 1963. https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
Kelly, G. A. “Hegel’s America.” Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 2, no. 1, 1972, pp. 3–36.
Koebler, Jason. “Palantir Is Extending Its Reach Even Further into Government.” Wired, July 9, 2025. https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-government-contracting-push/
Lacan, Jacques. Seminar XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, trans. R. Grigg, Polity Press, 2007.
Land, Nick. Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987–2007. Edited by Maya B. Kronic and Ray Brassier, Urbanomic / Sequence Press, 2011.
Last, Cadell. Christian Atheism. Philosophy Portal, 2024, https://philosophyportal.online/christian-atheism
League of Conservation Voters. “The Trump Administration Has Threatened to Sell Off Our Public Lands and Waters Since Day One.”
League of Conservation Voters, August 25, 2025. www.lcv.org/media-center/the-trump-administration-has-threatened-to-sell-off-our-public-lands-and-waters-since-day-one
Leingang, Rachel; Gumbel, Andrew; Hellmann; Melissa.“Millions across US turn out for ‘No Kings’ protests against Donald Trump” The Guardian, June 14, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/14/no-kings-protests-trump-military-parade
Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. [Philadelphia, T.E. Zell 185-?, 1850]
Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. 1689. Edited by Peter Laslett, Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Manning, William. The Key of Liberty: Shewing the Causes Why a Free Government Has Always Failed, and a Remedy Against It. 1798. Reprint ed., Manning Assoc., 1922.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848, “Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists.” Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, trans. M. Milligan, Progress Publishers, 1959.
Marx, Karl. “Reflections of a Young Man on the Choice of Profession”, 1835; first published in Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung, trans. S. Ryan, 1925.
McLuhan, Andrew. @amicusadastra, posted on X, September 3, 2025.
Meyer, Neal. “Which Party Wants to Preserve the Status Quo?” Jacobin, September 10, 2024. https://jacobin.com/2024/10/party-role-reversal-democrats-republicans
Morris, G. Elliott. “America’s Reichstag Fire.” Strength In Numbers, September 12, 2025. https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/americas-reichstag-moment
National Immigration Law Center. Tracking the CECOT Disappearances. August 19, 2025. https://www.nilc.org/resources/tracking-the-cecot-disappearances/
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. W. Kaufmann, Penguin Books, 1976.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Use and Abuse of History, trans. A. Collins. United States, Dover Publications, 2019.
Oxfam America. “Is the U.S. Witnessing the Rise of Oligarchy?” Oxfam America, July 25, 2025.
Paine, Thomas. Agrarian Justice. 1797. The Thomas Paine National Historical Association,
Paine, Thomas. Paine: Political Writings. Edited by Bruce Kuklick. 2nd ed. of Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Parisot, Eric. Phiddian, Robert. Barclay, Katie. “Dark Enlightenments: An Introduction”. Eighteenth-Century Life 1 September 2024; 48 (3): 1–6.
Patrick, Stewart. “Trump Has Launched a Second American Revolution. This Time, It’s Against the World”. Carnegiee Endowment Emissary, March 19, 2025. https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2025/03/trump-foreign-policy-second-american-revolution-nato-un?lang=en
Plato. The Republic, trans. B. Jowett. London: Arcturus, 2018.
Powell, Jim. “Thomas Paine, Passionate Pamphleteer for Liberty.” Foundation for Economic Education, January 1, 1996. https://fee.org/articles/thomas-paine-passionate-pamphleteer-for-liberty/
Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters to a Young Poet, trans. S. Mitchell, Knopf Doubleday, 2011.
Simondon, Gilbert. On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, trans. C. Malaspina & J. Rogove. Univocal Publishing, 2017.
Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. The Library of Economics and Liberty, 1776.
Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 1776. Book I, Chapter XI, Part III.
Smith, Melancton. “Remarks, New York Ratifying Convention, June 27, 1788.” Founders Online, National Archives. https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch13s37.html
Tewers, Micah. Why I’m an Atheist Christian, [Independent feature film], 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqBQXcpK26U
Trump, Donald J. “I love the smell of deportations in the morning… Chicago about to find our why it’s called the Department of WAR [three helicopter emoji]” Truth Social, September 19, 2025. https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115158096026629509
Warren, Mercy Otis. Observations on the New Constitution, and on the Federal and State Conventions. 1788.
West, Rachel, and Laura Valle Gutierrez. “Trump’s Tariffs and Economy of Uncertainty Are Already Causing Pain.” The Century Foundation, August 5, 2025. https://tcf.org/content/commentary/trumps-tariffs-and-economy-of-uncertainty-are-already-causing-pain/
Žižek, Slavoj. Christian Atheism: How to Be a Real Materialist. Bloomsbury Academic, 2024.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Micah Tewers
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
