Toward a Sociology of Colonial Subjectivity: Political Agency in Haiti and Liberia

Abstract

The authors seek to connect global historical sociology with racial formation theory to examine how antislavery movements fostered novel forms of self-government and justifications for state formation. The cases of Haiti and Liberia demonstrate how enslaved and formerly enslaved actors rethought modern politics at the time, producing novel political subjects in the process. Prior to the existence of these nations, self-determination by black subjects in colonial spaces was impossible, and each sought to carve out that possibility in the face of a transatlantic structure of slavery. This work demonstrates how Haitian and Liberian American founders responded to colonial structures, though in Liberia reproducing them albeit for their own ends. The authors demonstrate the importance of colonial subjectivities to the discernment of racial structures and counter-racist action. They highlight how anticolonial actors challenged global antiblack oppression and how they legitimated their self-governance and freedom on the world stage. Theorizing from colonized subjectivities allows sociology to begin to understand the politics around global racial formations and starts to incorporate histories of black agency into the sociological canon.