The Epistemics of Mass Enslavement: Outlining a Research Program

Recorded: April 10, 2025
Event: Whither Global Antiquity? Retrospection and Future Directions
Citation: Padilla Peralta, Dan-el. “The Epistemics of Mass Enslavement: Outlining a Research Program,” Global Antiquity: Whither Global Antiquity (April 10, 2025).

by Dan-el Padilla Peralta (Princeton University)

Proceeding from the claim that, in general, the relevance of forms of labor to the history of knowledge has been routinely under-emphasized, this paper sets out a series of propositions for linking shifts in knowledge production to the emergence and intensification of mass enslavement in the ancient Mediterranean. (1) Societies that practice mass enslavement cultivate and sustain epistemic practices that are patterned around and feed into mass enslavement. (2) These epistemic practices assume literary as well as non-literary forms. (3) These epistemic practices vary in scale, intensity, and durability according to the scale, intensity, and duration of that society’s practice of mass enslavement.

About the Speaker

Dan-el Padilla Peralta is Professor of Classics, and associated faculty in African American Studies, at Princeton University. His most recent book is Classicism and Other Phobias (Princeton 2025).