The Department of Philosophy is pleased to present

William Paris, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto

“The Antinomies of Emancipation in Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom."

Thursday, February 5, 2026
4-6pm
Dunning Hall, Room 10

That the emancipation from slavery is the central theme of Fredrick Douglass's autobiography is indisputable. But the climatic moment of emancipation in the autobiography where he proclaims that he was "a freemen in fact, while I remained a slave in form" is remarkably ambiguous. How can one be both free and a slave? The aim of this talk is to unpack the antinomic structure of Douglass's autobiography as a specifically literary matter. The attempt at self-narrating a book of freedom from within a society still entrenched in slavery offers a sense of how emancipation must be indivisible even as the domination of slavery relentlessly divides the enslaved against themselves. Taking seriously My Bondage and My Freedom as a work of art allows us to see how Douglass grasped something of our modern condition: we are both free and bound.

EVERYONE WELCOME