Empire of Liberty: Power, Desire, and Freedom

In this thoughtful and timely consideration of the nature of American power and empire, Anthony Bogues argues that America's self-presentation as the bastion of liberty is an attempt to force upon the world a single universal truth, which has the objective of eradicating the radical imagination. Central to this project of American supremacy is the elaboration and construction of a language of power in which a form of self-government appears as the from of sovereignty. Grappling with issues of power, race, slavery, violence, and the nature of postcolonial criticism and critical theory, Bogues offers reconsiderations of the writings of W. E. B. DuBois and Frantz Fanon in order to break holes in this accepted structure of empire. At its heart this is a work of radical humanistic theory that seeks to glean from the postcolonial world and empire an alternative to its imperial form of freedom

"This extraordinary set of essays does nothing less than set out to recover a notion of human freedom. It does this against the backdrop of, on the one hand, the co-opting of the language of freedom by a neoliberal project, and on the other hand, the epistemic blindness of conventional critical theory. What shines through in these essays is Bogues's essential humanity, and the depth and seriousness with which he engages the resources of critical theory, and a radical, black intellectual tradition in particular. Invoking the spirit of W.E.B. DuBois, these essays confirm Anthony Bogues to be a worthy inheritor of this tradition, and an indispensable thinker of our own time and place."

"Empire of Liberty is a Serious intellectual work that shows all the signs of having significance both within and beyond the academic world. Given its scope, Bogues's work is a solid example of what a global humanities might be."

Anthony Bogues is Harmon Family Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University. He is the author of numerous books, including Black Heretics and Black Prophets: Radical Political Intellectuals