Manorial Capitalism, Enslavement, and the Logic of Dividuation

Raphael Sassower is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. He is the author of several books, most recently, The Specter of Hypocrisy (2020) and The Quest for Prosperity: Reframing Political Economy (2017).

“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)

• Introduction Part I Manorial Capitalism Chapter 1: The Paternal Figure (or Father Complex) as the Site of Power Relations Chapter 2: Incorporation into the Political Economy Canon Part II Enslavement Chapter 3: Exploitation as the Constitutive Feature of Capitalism Chapter 4: The Afterlives of American Enslavement Part IIIThe Logic of Dividuation Chapter 5 The Dividual, the Individual, and the Loss of Social Fabric Chapter 6 The Fractured Human Being By Way of Concluding