The Slave's Work: Reading Slavery through Hegel's Master-Slave Dialectic

Abstract

Inphenomenology of spirit(1807), G. W. F. Hegel employs the figures of the “lord” and “bondsman” to explain the struggle between an independent and a dependent self-consciousness in the aftermath of what he calls the “trial by death” or “life-and-death struggle.” Commonly cited today as the “master-slave dialectic,” this complex, foundational theory of the subject relies on metaphors that compel us to ask whether consciousness can be represented through language. Hegel's recourse to these metaphors has produced two broad tendencies in the understanding of and approach to “master” and “slave” in the philosopher's theory. Many current interpreters of the dialectic practice a phylogenetic reading, in which both figures are taken as historical subjects whose documented interpersonal relations provide empirical proof of slavery's practices. By contrast, most Continental philosophers perform an ontogenetic reading, in which they consider the relations between master and slave to be intrapersonal and regard these figures as metaphors that can be used to explain precise moments in the speculative processes of consciousness. Deciding to read the master-slave dialectic as either a struggle between two individuals or a struggle between two forms of consciousness within the subject has important theoretical and methodological consequences that I would like to describe and examine, especially as they pertain to the meanings of work in slavery. Whereas the slave's work has traditionally and accurately been understood as physical labor externally enforced by the master, less critical attention has been paid to reading the slave's work ontogenetically, as an internal struggle for the freedom of self-mastery. Such an ontogenetic reading provides valuable insights into ubiquitous but less frequently studied forms of resistance from within slavery.