Tropes of Freedom

The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) was the only successful insurrection of slaves and founded the third constitutional state of the modern world with the Republic of Haiti. Despite that, it often disappears behind the American and the French Revolutions in the history books and in philosophy.

Following postcolonial and feminist political theory, Jeanette Ehrmann presents an extensive interpretation of the revolutionary ideas and practices as well as the dialectics of emancipation. She shows how deeply colonialism, enslavement and racism are ingrained within the self-understanding of modernity and opens a critical horizon for a decolonisation of the political.