R Radhakrishnan

A brilliant "double-conscious" analysis of the workings of the ex-slave and subsequently philosophical mind of Frederick Douglass, Nick Bromell's POWERS OF DIGNITY opens up new ground in our understanding of both the limitations and the possibilities of stand point epistemology. With a rigorous focus on the given-ness of history, Bromell reenacts with sympathy and rare critical acumen the drama of the becoming of Douglass as a thinker and philosopher. The so called ambivalence of Douglass on a number of crucial issues, Bromell argues and demonstrates, is not the result of weak or irresolute thinking, but the symptom of a well trained mind aware of the reality of multiple histories and multiple audiences and communication contexts. In insisting on the phenomenological as well as the historical importance of where "one comes from," Douglass seeks to fulfill a perspectival universality, without privilege or exceptionalism. This book is a must read not only for Americanists, Critical Race Theorists, Black and intersectional thinkers, but for spokespersons of subjugated knowledges who cannot afford to by pass the travails of double consciousness in the name of an all too felicitous, and for that reason, political transparency. R. Radhakrishnan Distinguished Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and African American Studies, University of California, Irvine, USA.