Elisabeth Paquette
Oct 20, 2020Universal Emancipation
Race Beyond Badiou
University of Minnesota Press 2020
What is Badiou’s theory of emancipation? For whom is this emancipation possible? Does emancipation entail an indifference to difference? In Universal Emancipation: Race Beyond Badiou (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) Elisabeth Paquette pursues these questions through a sustained conversation with decolonial theory, particularly the work of Sylvia Wynter. Through consideration of Négritude and the Haitian Revolution, Paquette argues for a theory of emancipation that need not subtract particularities, as Badiou theorizes, but rather build a pluri-conceptual framework, as Wynter theorizes, for emancipation based on solidarity.