Bloomsbury The Architecture of Freedom: Hegel, Subjectivity, and the Postcolonial State

Positioned at the intersection of philosophy and African studies, this book identifies Hegels Africa as a fluid, utopic space enabling the traversal of the binary of East and West. As Hegels figure for the non-historical, Africa marks the negativity propelling the movement of the dialectic in time. Mirroring the shrouded continents relation to history, Kantian architectonics steps out of the realm of logic in Hegels system and drives the historical unfolding of the aesthetic. In a foundational move, Hegel hypostatizes the aesthetic entanglement of built and linguistic form as the colossus of Memnon, an African warrior memorialized in ancient architecture, myth, and art. Reaching for freedom, the Memnon marks the architectonic modality through which the African slave, at the telos of history, will fulfill the spiritual promise of the human and bring about the politically mature state. The book examines the syncretic figure of the Memnon and slave in Hegels lecture courses, The Phenomenology of Spirit, The Encyclopedia, and The Philosophy of Right, offering a new reading of his related theories of the aesthetic, mastery and servitude, subjectivity, and the state and calling for a reassessment of these concepts in African studies and other philosophically informed disciplines. The book will be of interest to scholars in philosophy, postcolonial and African studies, political theory, architecture, and historiography.