Remarks on the sceptical turn in the historiography of the Haitian Revolution
Lessons from the art of abstraction
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9390883 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Carl Wilén (0000-0002-1408-2866, University of Gothenburg, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 111-132 |
| Publication date | 2021-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Distinktion Journal of Social Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1600-910X • E-ISSN: 2159-9149 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1600910x.2021.1991418 |
| OpenAlex | W3211204468 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 37 |
One of the major arguments made in the current boom in Haitian revolutionary studies connects today’s conditions of possibility for modern democracy and human rights to the abolition of slavery during the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). During the last decade, however, this connection between the Haitian Revolutionary period and our own age has been questioned by an increasing number of scholars: a phenomenon that this article conceptualizes as the ‘sceptical turn’. The article argues that the sceptical turn consummates its critique through unacknowledged rearrangements of abstractions, and therefore misses its target. A corresponding critique of the sceptical turn is formulated here using Bertell Ollman’s tripartite concept of the abstractions of vantage point, extension, and generality. Ollman’s notion enables a shift of focus onto modes – instead of the more common focus on levels – of abstraction. Thus, the author argues, contra the sceptical turn, not only that the connection between the Haitian Revolution and the political and social situation of today is plausible, but that it also provides a more profound conceptual basis for analyses of revolutionary events in general
Abstraction · Connection (principal bundle · Democracy · Epistemology · Generality · Historiography · Phenomenon · Political science · Politics · Skepticism · Sociology · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Psychology
The theory of capitalist development
The Caribbean in the Age of Revolution
Avengers of the New World
Explaining Social Behavior
Method in Social Science
On the Nonglobalization of Ideas
Haiti’s Commercial Treaties
The Old Regime and the Haitian Revolution
Marx and the Politics of Abstraction
Toussaint Louverture
Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’
Insurgent Universality
The Possibility of Naturalism
Dissecting the Social
Human Rights and Revolutions
Structure, Temporality, and Theories of Revolution. Reading Alberto Melucci in Revolutionary Saint Domingue, 1791–1804
The travail of Delaware slave families in the early republic
Hegel, Haiti and revolution
The Meanings of “Bourgeois Revolution”
Hercules, the Hydra, and the 1801 Constitution of Toussaint Louverture
An enslaved Enlightenment
Universalism After the Post-colonial Turn
So Much the Worse for the Whites
The Haitian Revolution, History's New Frontier
Modernity Disavowed
A defence of the category 'women
Slavery, Freedom, and the Work of Speculation
History and Catastrophe
Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History
Hegel and Haiti
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |