In this essay, I read Stuart Halls idea of politics without guarantees as meaning that all concepts are saturated with history and that no use of a concept can prevent it from being co-opted. The contribution of this reading is that it shifts the task of critical theory: if all concepts carry limitations and can be used to advance domination, then critical theorists need not search for pure concepts or worry about how to prevent our concepts from being captured. Instead, our task is to strategically leverage always already imperfect concepts with a view toward shared political goals. For an example of this kind of critical theory, I look to W. E. B. Du Boiss uses of human, humanity, and human rights in Black Reconstruction, which I suggest were informed by how he came to understand humanity in John Brown.
