Ok, so I obviously fully agree that the “canon” of eighteenth-century Anglophone texts and their authors is a trash fire. But as someone who works on the C18– a field that is *also* provides a home for powerful critiques of the colonialism, slavery, the hypocrisy of democratic...

...governance, etc— I get really annoyed when scholars who work on other periods refer to the entire period and its ideas with the adjective “Enlightenment.” .....

Not only have there been *trenchant* critiques of the idea, historical period, and (ultimately extremely small) intellectual culture that people describe with the term “enlightenment,” that have existed and become the bread and butter for scholars of the C18 for decades...

...but what people describe as “enlightenment” ideals or “enlightenment” notions are also themselves often part of different traditions *within* that group of crusty-ass white men planning for the expansion of colonialism and slavery. I guess my problem with this tendency is.....

...that it feels super flattening. I’m not saying anyone should go back and read Locke or Franklin all day— even as someone IN the field, I’d rather die— but as someone who really wants to see C18 studies work in closer conversation with the history of capitalism, Black studies..

...Native studies, postcolonial studies, and gender and sexuality studies, I guess it’s just off-putting to see what feels like other fields completely discounting the really important work that has been happening for DECADES to de-center people and ideas who get described....

...with the moniker “enlightenment” in favor of reading the entire C18 as one huge chorus singing a paean to the social contract or something. “Enlightenment” philosophers were a tiny, tiny minority and any real critique of the architecture of harm that many of them invested in..

... demands attention to their specificity. But, also, I want more care around the fact that a lot of REALLY bad structures also came out of theories that were totally outside of that social and intellectual milieu (I’m thinking of, the C19 US and Andrew Jackson).

Also, one last thing: “enlightenment” is basically a dirty word for any C18 scholar who gives a shit about slavery or colonialism.

Might delete all of this later, just frustrated at what feels like totally righteous forms of political and historical critique that I want so badly to really engage with C18 studies that won’t. And our crusty field really needs it.