A Fraught History. Emancipation and its Politics

Abstract

The essay starts from the hypothesis that the development of the modern meaning of the concept of emancipation, which occurred between the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, coincided with the unfolding of field of tension that makes the history of the concept a fraught history. This field of tension will be examined in different historical and political contexts and in relation to specific subjects that have transformed its semantics. The concept will first be investigated with a focus on the French Revolution and the 19th century. The second part of the article will analyse “emancipation” in light of critique advanced by Italian difference feminism and some contemporary rehabilitations of the concept such as the one proposed by Jacques Rancière.