"And I hereby distinctly and emphatically declare that I consider myself, and earnestly desire to be considered by others, as utterly divested, now and during the rest of my life, of any such rights, the barbarous relics of a feudal, despotic system"
About this Quote
Abolition-by-performance is the point here: Owen isn’t merely renouncing a privilege, he’s staging a public stripping-away of status. The phrasing is deliberately legalistic and over-insistent - “distinctly and emphatically declare,” “earnestly desire to be considered” - because he’s fighting on the battlefield where aristocratic rights actually live: in recognition, in deference, in the quiet social habit of treating some people as born exceptions. He understands that a “right” grounded in hierarchy survives not just in statutes but in other people’s reflexes. So he demands an audience that sees him differently, and by extension, sees the system differently.
“Utterly divested” is surgical language. It frames inherited privilege as a contaminant you can remove, not a natural attribute. Then comes the moral hammer: “barbarous relics,” “feudal,” “despotic.” Those aren’t neutral descriptors; they’re rhetorical quarantines. He’s trying to make the old order feel not merely outdated but shameful, something a modern person would be embarrassed to touch. The subtext is reputational warfare: if you keep these rights, you’re aligned with barbarism; if you renounce them, you join progress.
Context matters. Owen, a reform-minded politician shaped by early 19th-century democratic ferment and utopian egalitarianism, is speaking in an era when “rights” could mean both liberation and elite exemptions. He flips the term: some rights are not freedoms but instruments of domination. The intensity reads like a pledge - partly personal conscience, partly calculated signal to voters and peers that legitimacy now flows from equality, not pedigree.
“Utterly divested” is surgical language. It frames inherited privilege as a contaminant you can remove, not a natural attribute. Then comes the moral hammer: “barbarous relics,” “feudal,” “despotic.” Those aren’t neutral descriptors; they’re rhetorical quarantines. He’s trying to make the old order feel not merely outdated but shameful, something a modern person would be embarrassed to touch. The subtext is reputational warfare: if you keep these rights, you’re aligned with barbarism; if you renounce them, you join progress.
Context matters. Owen, a reform-minded politician shaped by early 19th-century democratic ferment and utopian egalitarianism, is speaking in an era when “rights” could mean both liberation and elite exemptions. He flips the term: some rights are not freedoms but instruments of domination. The intensity reads like a pledge - partly personal conscience, partly calculated signal to voters and peers that legitimacy now flows from equality, not pedigree.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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