CC Final Concepts

Human Emancipation (Marx, "On the Jewish Question")

Liberation that transcends formal legal equality by transforming material social relations.

Alienated Labor (Marx, Manuscripts of 1844)

Labor that estranges the worker from their product, activity, essence, and fellow humans.

Ideology (Marx, The German Ideology)

Ideas that reflect material class interests but appear as natural, universal truths.

Morality (Darwin)

A product of evolved social instincts, especially diffused sympathies, extended by memory and reflection—adaptive rather than divine or uniquely human.

Morality (Nietzsche)

A historical creation of power; master morality affirms life, while slave morality arises from ressentiment and guilt, masking weakness as virtue.

Morality (Marx)

An ideological tool shaped by material conditions and class interests; dominant moral values justify exploitation and alienation under capitalism.

Morality (Du Bois)

A spiritual and cultural force linked to the soul's development, emerging through struggle, sorrow, and the quest for higher individualism.

Morality (Gandhi)

The foundation of true civilization, grounded in truth, self-restraint, and nonviolence, in opposition to the immorality of materialist modernity.

Violence (Fanon)

A cleansing, generative force through which the colonized reclaim subjectivity and destroy the colonial order—"the colonized man liberates himself in and through violence."

Violence (Arendt)

An instrumental and anti-political tool that appears when power breaks down; it can destroy power but never create or sustain it.

Violence (Gandhi)

A moral failure rooted in cowardice and fear; true resistance must rely on satyagraha—nonviolence grounded in truth and courage.

Violence (Ambedkar)

Manifest in the everyday structural cruelty of the caste system; critiques both the symbolic and physical violence upheld by religion and tradition.

Power (Arendt)

The collective capacity to act in concert through speech and deliberation; distinct from violence, and the foundation of politics and freedom.

Power (Fanon)

The reappropriation of agency by the colonized; power emerges through revolutionary struggle and the violent undoing of colonial structures.

Power (Foucault)

A dispersed, productive force embedded in institutions and discourse; power shapes knowledge, bodies, and subjectivities rather than repressing them.

Power (Marx)

Rooted in material class domination; the power of the ruling class is maintained through control of production and the state.

Power (Butler)

Enforced through the repetition of social norms and categories like gender and sex; power works through performativity and regulation, not just prohibition. Heavily draws from Foucault.

Identity (Du Bois)

A fractured self shaped by the experience of double consciousness—living between one's own self-perception and the racist gaze of society.

Identity (Fanon)

A colonial fabrication imposed through violence, language, and gaze; liberation requires destroying this imposed identity and forging a new national consciousness.

Identity (Hartman)

Shaped by archival absence and historical violence; the identity of the enslaved is often a product of silence, erasure, or imposed names like "Venus."

Identity (Combahee River Collective)

A political starting point—Black women's identity, though marginalized, becomes a basis for solidarity and coalition against interlocking systems.

Identity (Gandhi)

Rooted in spiritual and moral tradition, especially village-based Indian life; opposes Westernized, colonially imposed identity.

Freedom (Marx)

The abolition of alienation and private property, enabling collective self-realization through unalienated labor—human emancipation, not just legal rights.

Freedom (Du Bois)

The soul's self-development through education and struggle, overcoming double consciousness and the constraints of racial oppression.

Freedom (Fanon)

A total rupture from colonial domination, achieved through violent decolonization and the creation of a new national and human identity.

Freedom (Arendt)

The ability to begin anew through collective action and speech in public; freedom is political, not simply personal or economic.

Freedom (Gandhi)

Moral self-rule (swaraj) grounded in truth, discipline, and nonviolence—freedom begins with inner transformation, not political sovereignty alone.

Freedom (Ambedkar)

Social equality and dignity for the oppressed castes—true freedom requires annihilating caste and rewriting the social order, not just formal independence.

Freedom (Butler)

The subversion of normative categories like gender and sex; freedom emerges by exposing identity as performative and enabling alternative enactments.

Freedom (Foucault)

A paradox: individuals are shaped by power, but resistance lies in revealing and unsettling the regimes that define truth and the self.

Freedom (Nietzsche)

The self-overcoming of herd values through the creation of one's own morality—the path of the Übermensch who affirms life and will to power.

Freedom (Combahee River Collective)

Collective liberation from interlocking systems of oppression; no one is free until the most marginalized are.

Species-Life/Being (Marx)

Human essence as creative, social, and self-actualizing.

Historical Materialism (Marx)

Material conditions and economic relations drive historical change.

Political Emancipation (Marx)

Formal rights granted by the state under capitalism.

Human Emancipation (Marx)

Liberation from alienation and capitalist exploitation.

The German Ideology (Marx)

Text outlining historical materialism and critique of ideology.

The Jewish Question (Marx)

Essay distinguishing political emancipation through liberal rights from true human emancipation, arguing that only abolishing private property can end religious and economic alienation.

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Marx)

Early notebooks diagnosing workers' fourfold alienation under capitalism, tracing private property to alienated labor, and envisioning communism as restoration of creative species‑being.

Commodity Fetishism (Marx)

Social relations appear as intrinsic value in things exchanged as commodities.

Class Struggle (Marx)

Historical engine of conflict between exploiting and exploited classes.

Diffused Sympathies (Darwin)

Moral instincts widening from kin to humanity at large.

Genealogy (Nietzsche)

Method tracing moral concepts to their contingent origins in power.

Ressentiment (Nietzsche)

Vengeful psychic reversal by the powerless that rebrands the strength of others as evil and their own weakness as moral good.

Satyagraha (Gandhi)

Truth‑force—non‑violent resistance grounded in moral courage.

Manichean World (Fanon)

Colonial space split into absolute racial binaries.

Interlocking Oppressions (Combahee)

Racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism operate together.

Annihilation of Caste (Ambedkar)

Radical social reform to abolish caste hierarchy.

Performativity (Butler)

Gender and even sex materialize through repeated social acts.

Discipline / Panopticism (Foucault)

Surveillance‑based techniques producing docile bodies.

Biopower (Foucault)

Management of populations by regulating life processes.

Critical Fabulation (Hartman)

Speculative narration to fill archival silences.

Race as Ideology (Fields)

Slavery created "race," and the idea endures beyond the institution.

"Performative Acts and Gender Constitution" (Butler)

Contends that gender and even sex are produced through repeated performative norms that can be subverted by re‑performance.

"Venus in Two Acts" (Hartman)

Uses critical fabulation to reclaim the silenced stories of enslaved girls and critique the archival violence that erased them.

"Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the United States of America" (Fields)

Demonstrates that slavery created racial ideology, which then survived to justify inequality after emancipation.

"A Black Feminist Statement" (Combahee River Collective)

Manifesto asserting that interlocking oppressions of race, gender, class, and sexuality require identity‑based collective struggle.

Annihilation of Caste (Ambedkar)

Radical critique of Hindu scripture's caste hierarchy, demanding its total abolition as a precondition for genuine social freedom.

Hind Swaraj (Gandhi)

Dialogic pamphlet rejecting modern Western civilization and advocating moral self‑rule (swaraj) through non‑violent truth‑force (satyagraha) and village life.