Irreparable Evil

An Essay in Moral and Reparatory History

David Scott

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Hardback

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English

Columbia University Press
18 April 2024

Slavery & abolition of slavery; Ethics & moral philosophy

What was distinctive about the evil of the transatlantic slave trade and New World slavery? In what ways can the present seek to rectify such historical wrongs, even while recognizing that they lie beyond repair? Irreparable Evil explores the legacy of slavery and its moral and political implications, offering a nuanced intervention into debates over reparations.

David Scott reconsiders the story of New World slavery in a series of interconnected essays that focus on Jamaica and the Anglophone Caribbean. Slavery, he emphasizes, involved not only scarcely imaginable brutality on a mass scale but also the irreversible devastation of the ways of life and cultural worlds from which enslaved people were uprooted. Colonial extraction shaped modern capitalism; plantation slavery enriched colonial metropoles and simultaneously impoverished their peripheries. To account for this atrocity, Scott examines moral and reparatory modes of history and criticism, probing different conceptions of evil. He reflects on the paradoxes of seeking redress for the specific moral evil of slavery, criticizing the limitations of liberal rights-based arguments for reparations that pursue reconciliation with the past. Instead, this book argues, in making the urgent demand for reparations, we must acknowledge the fundamental irreparability of a wrong of such magnitude.

By: David Scott
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780231213042
ISBN 10: 0231213042
Pages: 408
Publication Date: 18 April 2024
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Prologue: On the Devastation of Lifeworlds and Forms of Life Part I 1. The Idea of a Moral and Reparatory History Part II 2. Incomparable Evil 3. Incommensurable Evils Part III 4. Slavery’s Evil Lifeworld 5. Evil Enrichment Epilogue: On Irreparability Acknowledgments Notes Index

David Scott is the Ruth and William Lubic Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University. His books include Refashioning Futures: Criticism After Postcoloniality (1999), Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment (2004), Omens of Adversity: Tragedy, Time, Memory, Justice (2014), and Stuart Hall’s Voice: Intimations of an Ethics of Receptive Generosity (2017). Scott is the founder and editor of the journal Small Axe and director of the Small Axe Project.

Reviews for Irreparable Evil: An Essay in Moral and Reparatory History

Engaging with moral philosophy, social theory, and postcolonial thinking, David Scott boldly argues that New World slavery was an 'absolute evil,' or irreparable harm, characterized by the destruction of African lifeworlds, for which a reparative response, both moral and material, is necessary. He does so through lucid prose and timely arguments that relate the Caribbean past to our contemporary present in persuasive and provocative ways. -- Gary Wilder, author of <i>Concrete Utopianism: The Politics of Temporality and Solidarity</i>