CfP: Historical Materialism Ninth Annual Conference, London,
8-11 November
CfP: The Ninth Annual HM Conference will take place in
Central London from 8-11 November 2012
The Ninth Annual HM Conference will take place in
Central London from 8-11 November 2012
Weighs Like a Nightmare
Historical Materialism Ninth Annual Conference
Has Marx been reanimated once again? From mainstream media
to academia, this question hangs in the air. The old ghosts of revolution
appear to be shaking off their shackles and getting agitated. What is this
spirit? Who are the militants haunting this ramshackle capitalism? Are these
new spectres - stalking the streets of Syria, Tunisia and Egypt, Athens, Spain
and Wall Street and beyond - or direct descendants of socialist and communist
ones? How does the past haunt the present? How might the present haunt the
future?
As new conflicts and struggles emerge, the old questions
refuse to go away: What type of organisation is needed to sharpen the
conflicts, if any? Who are the agents of history and change? Is the scope of
political action national or international? What is the political value of
alliances and fronts? Does history cunningly work a progressive path through
and around the contingencies of struggle? Are the same mistakes to be made, the
same failures repeated?
The ninth HM annual conference focuses on the returns and
the persistence of political forms and theoretical problems, on the uses and abuses
of the history of Marxism in this turbulent present and on the ways and forms
in which an inheritance of various Marxist traditions can help us to organise
and to act in contemporary struggles.
We invite proposals for presentations or panels (with two or
three suggested participants) on topics such as: the echoes of the past in the
present; learning or not learning from the past; the reanimation of revolution;
history as farce, history as tragedy; historiography and Marxism; cycles;
circulation; anti-memory as a political stance; new histories of capital and
the labour movement; Marxism and 'deep history'; theory as history; the role of
archival sources in history and the place of theory; rhythms of historical
development, combined, uneven or otherwise; concepts of pre-capitalism; the
question of successive modes of production; historical or other materialisms;
the return of radical politics in Eastern Europe and elsewhere; post-communism;
the endless afterlives of 'Classical' Marxists and 'Western' Marxist theorists
and others who refuse to go away; the reruns of crisis; the role of memory and
the revisioning of history; forgotten figures suddenly blasted into
contemporary relevance; perma-war; imperial ghosts and their legacies, racism's
haunting returns; old and new world orders; old and new cultures; avant-gardes
and rearguards; the re-reading of classic texts; the question of Marxism's
relation to tradition; ideas of inheritance and 'selective tradition';
recovery; recuperation; periodisation; continuities and discontinuities;
narratives of new and old beginnings (of history, of culture, of the Left, of
Marxism).
[…]
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