There is a rare combination of rich historical depth and philosophical critique throughout this groundbreaking book. Part intellectual history and philosophy, part sociology and economic theorythis is insurgent interdisciplinarity at its finest. In an academic world where people talk incessantly about being critical, Sassowers scholarship actualizes it. He is a philosopher wielding the pen of a poet.
Reiland Rabaka, author of Du Bois: A Critical Introduction (University of Colorado, Boulder)
Manorial Capitalism, Enslavement, and The Logic of Dividuation explores the impossibly complex and elusive capitalist logics that are imbricated with the institution of slavery. Three interrelated questions serve to evoke the complexity of the imbrication: the historical afterlife of certain manorial relations of domination; the nature of enslavement enabled by the form of exploitation specific to capitalism; and the abstraction of the individual necessary to slavery as illuminated by a reading of Deleuzes logic of dividuation. In its engagement with an extraordinary range of scholarship, the book offers an essential contribution to the understanding of slavery and capitalism, and, at the same time, a model of how exciting a generous interdisciplinary study can be.
Elizabeth Weed, author of Reading the Impossible: Sexual Difference, Critique, and the Stamp of History (Brown University)
