Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780822959786)

In this path-breaking work, Susan Buck-Morss draws new connections between history, inequality, social conflict, and human emancipation. Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History offers a fundamental reinterpretation of Hegel's master-slave dialectic and points to a way forward to free critical theoretical practice from the prison-house of its own debates. Historicizing the thought of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the actions taken in the Haitian Revolution, Buck-Morss examines the startling connections between the two and challenges us to widen the boundaries of our historical imagination. She finds that it is in the discontinuities of historical flow, the edges of human experience, and the unexpected linkages between cultures that the possibility to transcend limits is discovered. It is these flashes of clarity that open the potential for understanding in spite of cultural differences. What Buck-Morss proposes amounts to a \u201cnew humanism, \u201d one that goes beyond the usual ideological implications of such a phrase to embrace a radical neutrality that insists on the permeability of the space between opposing sides and as it reaches for a common humanity.

Author: Susan Buck-Morss
ISBN-10: 082295978X
ISBN-13: 9780822959786
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Language: English
Published: 02/22/2009
Pages: 160
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.50w x 0.50d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 12/01/2006 pg. 128
Chronicle of Higher Education 03/06/2009 pg. 18
Choice 02/01/2010