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Putting Rights in Their Place

WALTER JOHNSON GIVES A BRACING critique of two ways of telling the history of slavery. One uses the rhetoric of humanity, the other the contemporary discourse of human rights. Rejecting both these trends on ethical grounds, Johnson offers an alternative vision of politics—and thus an alternative way of writing history. By and large I agree with him, but sometimes for other reasons than he gives.

Take “humanity” first. Johnson insists that not only did victims of oppression never risk losing their humanity (an offensive question in the first place, underwritten by the logic of white supremacy); masters did not betray their own humanity, either. Instead, slavery illustrates precisely what humans so often and so willingly do to other humans. Our bleak history is not one of dehumanization or inhumanity, but instead of the all too human capacity for domination.

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Boston Review
Winter 2017
VISUALIZZA IN NEGOZIO

Altri articoli in questo numero


Boston Review
Introduction
CEDRIC J. ROBINSON’S PASSING this summer at the age
Triptych
But for is always game. A man can be murdered twice
To Remake the World: Slavery, Racial Capitalism, and Justice
To Remake the World: Slavery, Racial Capitalism, and
History Matters
WALTER JOHNSON ARGUES AGAINST a triumphalist narrative
Abolition as Market Regulation
WHAT LANGUAGE SHOULD WE use when we talk about slavery?
The Gong of History; Or, What Is a Human?
EVERY GREAT HISTORICAL EPOCH in the freedom struggle
Theories of Justice
RETHINKING OUR NOTION OF JUSTICE through the history
Racial Capitalism and the Dark Proletariat
OUR IDEA OF RACIAL CAPITALISM, as Walter Johnson explains
Reviving the Black Radical Tradition
WALTER JOHNSON IS UPSET at the state of the historiography
What Slavery Tells Us about Marx
Following W. E. B. Du Bois and Cedric Robinson, Walter
When Liberalism Defended Slavery
Walter Johnson demonstrates how little liberal humanism
Black Humanity and Black Power
BLACK HUMANITY IS UNEXCEPTIONAL, Walter Johnson exhorts.
This, Our Second Nadir
IT HAS BEEN WORSE. Let’s not forget “The Nadir,” as
Racial Capitalism and Human Rights
Are we not coming more and more, day by day, to making
Lake Michigan, Scene 22
And I point to the list of the names of the missing
Births of a Nation: Surveying Trumpland with Cedric Robinson
Births of a Nation: Surveying Trumpland with Cedric
From Good Stock / Strange Blood Dawn
Symptomatic of being a slave is to forget you’re a
Further Reading
In addition to the work of our contributors, the editors
Contributors
Dwayne Betts is a poet, memoirist, and teacher. His