About this Event
Why did some abolitionists believe in racial inferiority? How were some slave owners humanists? This talk considers how discourses of liberal egalitarianism and Enlightenment humanism developed alongside theories of racial inferiority. Based on Black Enlightenment (Duke, 2023), it will focus on two moments in the history of German and British Enlightenment: a chapter on the Khoikhoi in German astronomer Peter Kolb’s 1719 Caput Bonae Spei Hodiernum and a surprising historical coincidence in January and February 1789, namely, Immanuel Kant and Olaudah Equaino commented on the same passage on Black laziness from a proslavery text. Kolb’s portrayal influenced Rousseau’s idea of the noble savage and Kant’s racist figuration of Black people. The juxtaposition of Kant and Equiano makes visible a growing anxiety about Black citizens in the polities of Europe in the late 18th century. How might returning to these moments shed light on our own time of racial prejudice and xenophobia?
*Reception to follow
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Deutsches Haus at Columbia University, 420 West 116th Street, New York, United States
USD 0.00
