Alex Dupuy is a retired sociology professor emeritus and author in the United States. He chaired Wesleyan University’s African American Studies department and was its John E. Andrus Professor of Sociology.[1] Born in Haiti,[2] he has written books and essays on Haiti.[3] An oral interview with him was recorded by Wesleyan in March 2019.[4]
Dupuy's work engages with the writings of Karl Marx and the history of capitalism. He argues for the primary importance of class in understanding the Haitian Revolution,[5] writing that race is a "purely ideological construct developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to justify the enslavement of Africans in the European colonies of the Americas".[6] He criticized the common understanding of how the Revolution affected Hegel's concept of the "master-slave dialectic", arguing that Hegel's racism and his ignorance about slavery in the Americas makes this supposed influence profoundly unlikely.[7]
