ABSTRACT
The study of classical political economy and histories of Atlantic slavery, the author's work undertakes a hermeneutical retrieval of the enslaved and their various descendents' traditions of thought and action. He describes it as a redemptive political economy. There are two broad aspects of this project. The first aspect is a rethinking of classical political economy in light of its engagement with, but disavowal of, Atlantic slavery as contemporaneous with the rise of capitalism in Europe. The classical relationship proposed between property, labour and freedom – a relationship in regard to which liberal, Marxist and Foucauldian approaches typically situate themselves – must be reconceived when the alienation of labour power is considered alongside what Aimé Césaire called the 'thingification' of labouring persons. The second aspect is to redeem cosmological understandings of the relationship between the market and (un)freedom, understandings that have been cultivated by enslaved Africans and their formally free descendants.
