Capitalism and Rights: Lessons from the Abolition of Slavery in the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)

This guest lecture in EC322: Geographies of Global Capitalism addresses the legacy of the Haitian Revolution and Marxist debates about rights and capitalism. 

In the first stage, it maps the emergence of the ‘universality paradigm,’ which asserts that the Haitian Revolution belongs to our own political and social reality by having played a central role in the genesis of universal human rights through its unmatched abolition of the primary example of particularism – the institution of slavery. In the second stage, it turns to a recent trend of ‘skeptical responses’ to the universality paradigm, focused on authoritarianism and inequality, which assert that the Haitian Revolution is irrelevant for present-day issues. In the third stage, it builds on Marxist debates about the relation between capitalism and rights to provide a critique of both the supporters and detractors of the universality paradigm. The lecture ends in an explication and defense of the idea that the Haitian Revolution belongs to our own age by virtue of its relation to rights and capitalism, although this connection also represents the limits of the Haitian Revolution.

Carl Wilén is a postdoctoral fellow at Lund University/Université Paris Nanterre.

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For more information, e-mail [email protected].

Time: 3:45 pm – 5:15 pm CET/GMT+1

Location: P24, Seminar Room 5

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