Manorial Capitalism, Enslavement, and the Logic of Dividuation
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
Publishing:31st Mar '25
£145.00
This title is due to be published on 31st March, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Manorial Capitalism, Enslavement, and the Logic of Dividuation proffers three perspectives on the plantation slave economy of the antebellum South. The first explores the paternal function as exemplified in the structural authority of the lord of the manor both symbolically and operationally. This figure of masculine authority persisted from the Medieval period to orchestrate what is called here Manorial Capitalism. The second examines the exploitation and alienation that epitomize the logic of capitalism from the plantation economy to the present. And the third deploys retroactively the logic of dividuation to the plantation, a logic that draws its inspiration from neoliberal financial capitalism as well as from anthropological accounts (which distinguish the dividual from the Cartesian-Kantian individual). This book argues that reducing individuals to dividuated components continues to enable a dehumanizing capitalist mindset to fixate on abstracted labor power rather than seeing laboring individuals.
“There is a rare combination of rich historical depth and philosophical critique throughout this groundbreaking book. Part intellectual history and philosophy, part sociology and economic theory—this is insurgent interdisciplinarity at its finest. In an academic world where people talk incessantly about being ‘critical’, Sassower’s scholarship actualizes it. He is a philosopher wielding the pen of a poet.”
Reiland Rabaka, author of Du Bois: A Critical Introduction (University of Colorado, Boulder)
“Manorial Capitalism, Enslavement, and The Logic of Dividuation explores the impossibly complex and elusive capitalist logics that are imbricated with the institution of slavery. Three interrelated questions serve to evoke the complexity of the imbrication: the historical afterlife of certain manorial relations of domination; the nature of enslavement enabled by the form of exploitation specific to capitalism; and the abstraction of the individual necessary to slavery as illuminated by a reading of Deleuze’s logic of ‘dividuation’. In its engagement with an extraordinary range of scholarship, the book offers an essential contribution to the understanding of slavery and capitalism, and, at the same time, a model of how exciting a generous interdisciplinary study can be.”
Elizabeth Weed, author of Reading the Impossible: Sexual Difference, Critique, and the Stamp of History (Brown University)
ISBN: 9781032752648
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
328 pages