Divine servitude against the work of man: dispossessive subjects and Exoduses to and from property
The self-possessive individual of early modern colonial capitalism depended upon a limit to the self's alienability: while one could buy and sell other humans, one could not sell or enslave oneself. This essay explores how liberal political philosophers and abolitionist hermeneuts managed Bibli...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Routledge
[2020]
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In: |
Religion
Year: 2020, Volume: 50, Issue: 2, Pages: 215-236 |
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Bible. Exodus 21
/ Self
/ Enslavement
/ Colonialism
/ Slavery
/ Capitalism
|
RelBib Classification: | CB Christian life; spirituality HA Bible |
Further subjects: | B
Slavery
B black autobiography B Locke B Exodus |
Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) |
Summary: | The self-possessive individual of early modern colonial capitalism depended upon a limit to the self's alienability: while one could buy and sell other humans, one could not sell or enslave oneself. This essay explores how liberal political philosophers and abolitionist hermeneuts managed Biblical sanction for voluntary enslavement (contained in Exodus 21) in order to ground and normalize liberal-capitalist institutions, such as private property and wage labor. It then shifts to an archive of black ex-slave spiritual autobiography, exploring how former slaves figured their becoming mundanely free as becoming God's possession. Refusing liberal self-possession, these once-possessed, dispossessive subjects articulate a general critique of property relations. |
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ISSN: | 1096-1151 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Religion
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/0048721X.2020.1713515 |