Ebook: Queer Spirit: From Marxist-Hegelian Humanism to Decolonial Politics [Dissertation]

"While modern democratic political theory claims to be founded on a humanism oriented towards universal freedom, the conceptual foundations of many Western European thinkers, and in particular G. W. F. Hegel, naturalize dehumanization. In my dissertation I draw from the work of queer, feminist, socialist, and decolonial thinkers to elucidate and address the contradictions of modern political philosophy as they are outlined in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. I argue that his concept of universal freedom remains abstract as his construction of the modern state does not facilitate freedom universally. There are three critical sites of this failure: (1) heteronormativity and the status of women who are socially necessary but excluded politically; (2) the creation of a “rabble” who, for no clear reason, have become economically dispossessed to the point that they cannot enjoy any form of freedom; and (3) colonialism and its attendant dehumanizing racialization of non-European peoples, justifying their degradation for the well-being of European nation-states. To address these issues, I offer an account of queer spirit/Sittlichkeit, decolonial humanism, and decolonial political economy as promising new developments articulating a decolonized humanism and a new approach to political economy able to take the well-being of the totality of humanity as its object."