Emancipation generally means to free a person from a previous restraint or legal disability. More broadly, it is also used for efforts to procure
economic and social rights,
political rights or
equality, often for a specifically
disenfranchised group, or more generally, in discussion of many matters.
Among others,
Karl Marx
Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...
discussed political emancipation in his 1844 essay "
On the Jewish Question", although often in addition to (or in contrast with) the term ''human emancipation''. Marx's views of political emancipation in this work were summarized by one writer as entailing "equal status of individual citizens in relation to the state,
equality before the law, regardless of religion, property, or other 'private' characteristics of individual people."
"Political emancipation" as a
phrase
In grammar, a phrasecalled expression in some contextsis a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English language, English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adject ...
is less common in modern usage, especially outside academic, foreign or activist contexts. However, similar concepts may be referred to by other terms. For instance, in the United States the
Civil Rights movement culminated in the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, the
Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the
Fair Housing Act of 1968, which can collectively be seen as further realization of events such as the
Emancipation Proclamation and the abolition of slavery a century earlier. In the current and former
British West Indies islands the holiday
Emancipation Day
Emancipation Day is observed in many former European colonies in the West Indies and parts of the United States on various dates to commemorate the emancipation of African slave trade#Abolition, slaves of African descent.
In much of the British ...
is celebrated to mark the end of the
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of Slavery in Africa, enslaved African people to the Americas. European slave ships regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Pass ...
.
Etymology
The term ''emancipation'' derives from the Latin
ēmancĭpo/
ēmancĭpatio (the act of liberating a child from parental authority) which in turn stems from ''
ē manu capere'' (capture from someone else's hand).
See also
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Abolitionism
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Catholic emancipation
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Dunmore's Proclamation
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Ecclesiastical emancipation
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Emancipation of minors
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Emancipation Proclamation
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Emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia
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Emancipist
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Emancipation Day
Emancipation Day is observed in many former European colonies in the West Indies and parts of the United States on various dates to commemorate the emancipation of African slave trade#Abolition, slaves of African descent.
In much of the British ...
*
Jewish emancipation
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Liberation (disambiguation)
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Manumission
Manumission, or enfranchisement, is the act of freeing slaves by their owners. Different approaches to manumission were developed, each specific to the time and place of a particular society. Historian Verene Shepherd states that the most wi ...
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Political freedom
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Revolution (disambiguation)
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Self-determination
Self-determination refers to a people's right to form its own political entity, and internal self-determination is the right to representative government with full suffrage.
Self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international la ...
*
Tanzimat
*
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Several instances occurred in recent centuries where women were selectively given, then stripped of, the right to vote. In Sweden, conditional women's suffra ...
*
Youth rights
References
Further reading
*
Todd McGowan: ''Emancipation after Hegel. Achieving a Contradictory Revolution'', New York: Columbia UP, 2021 (Paperback)
*Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzi
''Karl Marx as a Philosopher of Human Emancipation'' translated by Dylan C. Stewart
External links
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