A Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing: Frederick Douglass and the Architectonic of African American Radicalism

Abstract

This study argues that Frederick Douglass articulated a distinctively radical rhetorical stance that searched for a passage through the epistemological antimonies of transcendence and immanence; the ideological antimonies of structure and agency; and the performative antimonies of the actually existing and the utopian. He did so by offering a radical critique of the dominant rhetorical traditions of his time—that of Puritan rhetoric, Lockean liberalism, and herrenvolk Republicanism. Specifically, Douglass challenged the metaphysical presuppositions of Puritanism, demonstrated the contradictions of Lockean liberalism's social contract, and offered a trenchant critique of herrenvolk Republicanism's mobocracy.