Stuart Hood – Centenary Day Conference

Stuart Hood

STUART HOOD (1915-2011)

CENTENARY DAY CONFERENCE

Open University in London and the South-East

1-11 Hawley Crescent

London NW1 8NP

(Near Camden Town tube on the Northern Line)

Saturday November 28

10.30 a.m. – 5.30 p.m.

We hope to provide coffee and tea and there will be a social space for discussion over lunch (not provided). There are takeway catering facilities nearby.

There is no conference fee.  But please register your attendance with Hilary Horrocks at: hilaryhorrocks@btinternet.com as the venue has a limited capacity.

*

Stuart Hood, born in small-town NE Scotland in 1915, volunteered for army service in 1940 and was captured in the North African desert while stationed in Cairo with British Intelligence. He was released from an Italian prisoner of war camp at the time of the Armistice in September 1943 and, during an almost-year-long journey to meet the Allied advance, fought with Tuscan partisans, participating in the now semi-mythologised Battle of Valibona (January 1944). His memoir Pebbles from My Skull (1963), often republished, mainly as Carlino, is a classic reflection on his time in war-torn Italy. He worked for 17 years at the BBC, resigning in frustration from the position of Controller of Programmes, Television, in 1963, having been responsible for programmes such as Z-Cars and That Was the Week That Was. He made important documentaries including The Trial of [Soviet dissidents] Daniel and Sinyavsky; and was briefly Professor of Media Studies at the Royal College until asked to resign following his support for student protests. He latterly taught at the University of Sussex. He was a distinguished translator, particularly from German (including the poems of his great friend, Erich Fried) and Italian (including work by Dario Fo and Pier Paolo Pasolini). Returning to an earlier career as a fiction writer, he published a series of novels – A Storm from Paradise (1985), The Upper Hand (1987), The Brutal Heart (1989), A Den of Foxes (1991), and The Book of Judith (1995) – which draw on his Scottish childhood, his wartime experiences and his encounters with, amongst others, members of the Baader-Meinhof group. He joined the Communist Party as a student in Edinburgh but after the war was an anti-Stalinist socialist and briefly, in the 1970s, a member of the Workers Revolutionary Party. Influenced by the class-conscious trade unionists he had met in his university days, he was, also in the 1970s, an active Vice-President of the film and TV technicians’ union, ACTT.

Provisional conference programme follows …

 

PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME (subject to amendment)

10.30 Arrival and Registration

10.45 Welcome, Terry Brotherstone and David Johnson

 

10.50-11.50 Session One

10.50 Showing of extracts from Stuart Hood’s documentary return to his childhood home, A View from Caterthun, with commentary by filmmakers Don Coutts and Christeen Winford.

11.20 Hilary Horrocks (freelance editor and independent researcher), ‘Stuart Hood, Partigiano – finding traces today in Emilio-Romagna and Tuscany’.

 

11.55-12.45 Session Two

11.55 Phil Cooke (University of Strathclyde), ‘The Italian Resistance: recent work on the historical context of Carlino’.

12.20 Karla Benske (Glasgow Caledonian University), ‘Showcasing the “compexity of human reactions”: an appreciation of Stuart Hood’s novels’.

 

12.45 Lunch

 

2.00-3.15 Session Three

2.00 Robert Lumley (University College, London), ‘Keeping Faith: revisiting interviews with Stuart Hood’.

2.25 Brian Winston (University of Lincoln) and Tony Garnett (film and TV director and producer), ‘Stuart Hood and the Media’.

3.15-3.30 Break

 

3.30-4.45 Session Four

3.30 David Johnson (Open University), ‘Stuart Hood, Scottish Literature and Scottish Nationalism’.

3.55 Haim Bresheeth (London School of Economics), ‘Working with Stuart on the Holocaust’.

4.20 Terry Brotherstone (University of Aberdeen) will lead a discussion on Stuart Hood’s politics, including his involvement in the 1970s with the Workers Revolutionary Party.

 

4.45-5.30 Session Five

4.45 Final reflections and future proposals.

5.15 Close.

5.30 Social gathering nearby.

 

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/stuart-hood-1915-2011-centenary-day-conference-28-november

 

***END***

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Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

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Before ’68

1968

BEFORE ‘68

Conference—”Before ’68: The Left, activism & social movements in the long 1960s”

Conference Dates: 13 and 14 February 2016

Venue: School of History, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK and hosted by UEA School of History in conjunction with the journal Socialist History and the Institute of Working Class History (Chicago).

The events of 1968, particularly those in France, have achieved a mythical status in both the memory and the historiography of the 1960s. For some, 1968 marked the end-point of a realignment of the European ‘New Left’. For others 1968 represented a student generation in revolt, and many of the first accounts which sought to explain the history and meaning of ’68 were written by that generation.

More recently historians have tried to demythologise ’68, looking both at less ‘glamourous’ locales and at the deeper histories of anti-colonial struggles and worker activism prior to the events of that year. The aim of this conference is to explore the diverse histories of social activism and left politics in Britain and elsewhere, and how they prepared the ground for and fed into ‘1968’.

Themes might include, but are not limited to:

• Anti-nuclear & peace movements
  Civil Rights struggles
  The Black Power movement
  Anti-colonial politics
  The activities of the Labour movement and the ‘traditional’ Left
  The grassroots activism of the ‘New Left’
  Far Left challenges: Trotskyism & Maoism
  Campaigns around housing and the built environment
  Campaigns around race and discrimination in the workplace and housing
  Solidarity movements with struggles abroad (e.g. South Africa, Vietnam)
  Campaigns for Homosexual Equality
  Second Wave Feminism

We are seeking papers of 5,000 to 10,000 words on any aspects of left activism and social movements in the period preceding 1968 to be presented at the conference. Selected papers will be published in a special issue of the journal Socialist History. Attendance at the conference will be free of charge, but we ask that anyone wishing to attend registers in advance.

Proposals for papers and any enquiries should be submitted to Ben Jones.

Email: b.jones5@uea.ac.uk

Deadline for proposals for papers: 31 October 2015

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/call-for-papers-before-9268-the-left-activism-social-movements-in-the-long-1960s-1

 

***END***

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

De-Naturalising Disasters

DE-NATURALISING DISASTERS

A WORKSHOP

The ‘De-Naturalising Disasters’ workshop, is part of the ‘Living in the Anthropocene: Rethinking the Nature/Culture Divide’ series.

The event is convened by David Chandler (University of Westminster) and Camilla Royle (King’s College, London).

Further information is available here: http://rethinkingtheanthropocene.blogspot.co.uk/
Date: Friday 18th September, 2015
Venue: Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster, Westminster Forum, 5th floor, 32-38 Wells Street, London, W1T 3UW (5 minutes walk from Oxford Circus tube station)
Time: 4.00pm-8.00pm

Programme: De-Naturalising Disasters

Introduction: Bruno Latour argues that we should love our ‘monsters’. Nothing illustrates this demand better than how disasters are becoming increasingly central to the political imagination. From the late Ulrich Beck’s views of ’emancipatory catastrophism’ to the UN Post-2015 Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, disasters are becoming a subject of ethical care. Disasters are no longer excluded from politics and seen as external or natural events but are instead seen as enabling agents of political change. The United Nations, for example, is forwarding a new paradigm suggesting that disaster risk should be embedded within everyday governance and development processes and managed through taking responsibility for social and environmental outcomes. In this way, disasters – as outcomes of social processes – enable learning, reflection and potentially emancipatory outcomes. This workshop seeks to discuss how disasters have overcome the nature/culture divide and what is at stake in learning how to love them.

4.00-5.30 “Grand Strategies for Anthropocene Challenges: Can we Learn in Time?” Speaker: Jamie MacIntosh (Professorial Venture Research Fellow & Director of the Institute for Security & Resilience Studies, University College, London) Chair: David Chandler (University of Westminster)

The UK’s recently elected government has now revved up the Whitehall policy machine to distil the 2015 batch of strategies. Ministerial speeches and fanfares are not far off. The UK Government is one among many major and minor bodies that drafts strategies. There were 51 state signatories to the UN Charter in 1945; there are now 193 sovereign bodies. The financial power of several non-state bodies far exceeds that of many UN Leviathans. Nevertheless, after the post-Cold War unipolar moment and Washington Consensus, we are all – for better or worse – immersed in a multipolar world. Moreover, it’s a multipolar world that within a few years and decades will have to face up to the challenges of the Anthropocene with our productivity still flat and inequality growing. There is little evidence that we are developing healthy appetites for the systemic risks and radical uncertainties that abound. Whether you look to elites or the multitudes, the competencies, capabilities and capacity necessary for the species to make it to the 22nd Century cannot be taken for granted. Can we learn in time how to make grand strategies work or are they myths to numb the hapless? Do universities have anything pragmatic to offer?

5.30-6.00 break

6.00-7.30 “Can Disaster Risk Management be Emancipatory?” Speaker: Mark Pelling (Professor of Geography, Centre for Integrated Research on Risk and Resilience, King’s College, London) Chair: Camilla Royle (King’s College, London)

Disaster risk management science has a long critical tradition including work by Hewitt, Wisner and Watts. The advent of climate change adaptation has opened new policy relevance for disaster risk management, but without taking on board this critical viewpoint. The result has been an adaptation science framed around stability seeking. Resilience has come to symbolise this conservative vision for risk management. One response has been to call for Transformative Adaptation. The paper will examine the advent and rise of transformation and its current positioning in the emerging post-2015 development agenda.

7.30 wine reception

Many thanks,
David Chandler and Camilla Royle

David Chandler, Professor of International Relations, Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Westminster, 32-38 Wells Street, London, W1T 3UW. Tel: ++44 (0)776 525 3073.
Journal Editor, Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/resi20
Amazon books page: http://www.amazon.co.uk/David-Chandler/e/B001HCXV7Y/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
Personal website: http://www.davidchandler.org/
Twitter: @DavidCh27992090

***END***

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Violence, Representations and Sexuality

Aesthetics

VIOLENCE, REPRESENTATIONS AND SEXUALITY

FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL NETWORK FOR SEXUAL ETHICS AND POLITICS – INSEP

CALL FOR PAPERS – INSEP2015

13th ‐ 15th July, 2015, Ghent University, Belgium
Hosted by CEVI – Centre for Ethics and Value Inquiry
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2
9000 Ghent – Belgium
See: http://www.insep.ugent.be/insep2015/
General Conference Theme – Violence, Representations and Sexuality

The relationship between violence and sexuality is one of the most critical areas of engagement for sex and sexuality research and activism. There continues to be an epidemic of violence against women and children – rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment and abuse – across the globe, manifest in different cultural customs and practices, authority structures, hetero‐patriarchal and hetero‐normative regimes at both national (and supranational in the case of trafficking) and everyday micro levels. This epidemic is often met with: limited regulatory responses suffused with heterosexist assumptions; legal authorities that fail to prioritise or regard it is less important than other criminal activity; indifference; and/or claims that the prevalent cultural milieu makes it impossible to act. While some efforts have been made in North America, Europe and Australasia to effect change, in many parts of the globe sexual subjection and suffering continues to be seen as a normal state of affairs.

Equally, across the globe sexual difference and departures from heterosexuality are met by varying degrees of violence, ranging from physical attack and murder, to prejudicial and pathological assumptions that are present even in the social context of equality and rights discourses. To be different is still to be ‘othered’ to varying degrees, and that ‘othering’ often takes damaging forms of practice against those who present themselves as different.

The cultural and representational contexts are of particular importance here. It is in the representational form that we most saliently see the cultural demarcations of legitimacy and illegitimacy for sex and sexuality. Through representations, tensions are played out in the public arena that are sometimes manifest only in inter‐subjective or hetero‐normative meaning making. In societies where gay men and lesbians are formally recognised, there remains a dichotomy between the ‘respectable’ different that operates within homonormative constraints and lives without troubling heteronormative assumption, and the ‘queer’ whose personal practices challenge or disrupt cultural and social norms as a feature of being themselves. Likewise, the representation of sex in mainstream medias often reinforces particular understandings and meanings suffused with power, presumption and prejudice. Against that, alternate forms of media can play an important role in promote constructive understandings of the relationship between desire, pleasure and healthy satisfaction.

Violence and sexuality also creates a nexus of troubling contradictions. Recently, the fetishisation of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’, e.g., normalises a commodified and limited exploration of sexual imagination, whilst BDSMers and others who wish to move beyond difference as an adjunct to genito‐centric and penetrative sex remain culturally prejudiced against and subject to different and sometimes punishing pathologies and legal regulatory regimes. Pornography and prostitution represent other areas of contestation. Is pornography or prostitution inherently violent? Or is there room for sufficient levels of agency and choice? The juxtaposition of pain, violence and sex, whether in practice or in representation, whether consenting or not, splits those radical voices who often support sexual freedom. Does violence and sexuality represent a fault‐line for disagreement? Is that disagreement one of language and representation or of power, degradation and its effects? We welcome papers that explore any aspect of the relationship between violence, representation, sexuality and sex. As always, we also welcome other papers that reflect innovative, creative and thought‐provoking work on sexual ethics and politics in general. For this purpose we retain open streams at the conference. Please feel free to email the conference organisers for further inquiries.

Acceptance Policy

The fifth international conference of INSEP welcomes papers, presentations and panels focusing on conceptual and theoretical debates, cultural and political analysis and empirical studies from which conceptual, ethical and political conclusions are drawn.

INSEP seeks to provide a critical and dynamic space for cutting edge thinking, new research and key discussions and debates about issues of sexual ethics or politics, whether conceptual and theoretical discourse, analytical studies or aesthetically or empirically constituted insights. INSEP sees the value in the fullest range of approaches to the study of sexual ethics and politics, including: gendered and feminist perspectives; distinctive lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and transsexual perspectives; queer perspectives; and approaches from more general positions such as liberalism, Marxism and democratic theory.

The 2015 conference seeks to be an inclusive space for discussion, welcoming dialogue and vigorous debate, but not sectarianism. We consider paper proposals and panel proposals from any disciplinary field, and are willing to consider expositions that take less orthodox forms.

To facilitate funding applications ‐ please note INSEP has no funds of its own – we operate a ‘rolling’ process of abstract review and acceptance or rejection, and can provide documentation where it is required to facilitate funding. Our turnaround time for refereeing is 10 days.

Submission & Timeline: Submissions for papers (250 words), panels or workshops (500 word stipulating participants) should reach us by Monday 15 June at the latest. Earlier of course, is better.

Normal acceptance/rejection notification ‐ 10 days. All delegates/paper‐givers must register by Monday 23 June, and we encourage earlier registration when acceptances have been communicated.

Please send abstracts to: insep.network@gmail.com

The conference fee for the full three days is 150 Euros, which includes the conference pack and refreshments. A concessionary rate of 100 Euros is available to students and postgraduates.

INSEP publishes a journal and a book series with Barbara Budrich Publishers. We would anticipate commissioning publications from the conference and, dependent on quality and coherence, may publish a collection based on themes emerging from the conference. INSEP also welcomes submissions to the journal and proposals to the Book Series.

About INSEP

Sexual ethics and politics lie at the heart of how we understand and practice our sexual lives. They form the basis from which we understand and engage with diverse and different sexualities. Both, however, are currently open to question. On the one hand, discussion of sexual ethics has previously been confined to the auspices of an abstract intellectual discourse, effectively separating it from practice. Sexual politics, on the other hand, has seen progressive advances through world‐wide activism by grass‐roots movements, NGOs and national and international agents, but in the push for progress, the space for self‐critique and reflexivity is often eradicated. INSEP wants to activate a critical dialogue between sexual ethics and politics by connecting them and exploring the ways they can contribute to each other. The sexual is political and just as sexual politics could be enriched by emancipatory ethical thinking, sexual ethics should connect with contemporary sexual activism, politics and practices aiming for the realisation of sexual equalities and justice.
For more info on INSEP & the 2015 conference please visit:

INSEP2015: http://www.insep.ugent.be/insep2015/
INSEP – http://www.insep.ugent.be/
Journal INSEP – http://budrich‐journals.de/index.php/insep
Paul Reynolds
Reader in Sociology and Social Philosophy
Edge Hill University, UK
reynoldp@edgehill.ac.uk
Tom Claes
Associate Professor of Ethics
Ghent University, Belgium
Tom.Claes@UGent.be

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

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War Crimes, Atrocity and Justice

University for Strategic Optimism

WAR CRIMES, ATROCITY AND JUSTICE

 

War Crimes, Atrocity and Justice

Polity, November 2014
By: Michael J. Shapiro

What do we know about war crimes and justice? What are the discursive practices through which the dominant images of war crimes, atrocity and justice are understood?

In this wide ranging text, Michael J. Shapiro contrasts the justice-related imagery of the war crimes trial (for example the solitary, headphone-wearing defendant at the Hague listening with intent to a catalogue of charges) with literary justice: representations in literature, film, and biographical testimony, raising questions about atrocities and justice that juridical proceedings exclude.

By engaging with the ambiguities exposed by the artistic and experiential genres, reading them alongside policy and archival documentation and critical theoretical discourses, Shapiro’s War Crimes, Atrocity, and Justice challenges traditional notions of responsibility in juridical settings. His comparative readings instead encourage a focus on the conditions of possibility for war crimes as they arise from the actions of states, non-state agencies and individuals involved in arms trading, peace keeping, sex trafficking, and law enforcement and adjudication.

Theory springs to life as Shapiro draws on examples from legal discourse, literature, media, film, and television, to build a nuanced picture of politics and the problem of justice. It will be of great interest to students of film and media, literature, cultural studies, contemporary philosophy and political science.

http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0745671543.html

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Recent Articles and Features in the International Marxist-Humanist Webzine (December 2014)

Rosa Luxemburg

RECENT ARTICLES AND FEATURES IN THE INTERNATIONAL MARXIST-HUMANIST
WEBZINE (December 2014)
Website: http://www.internationalmarxisthumanist.org/

AFTER FERGUSON, THERE IS NO JUSTICE IN AMERICA – Statement of the International Marxist-Humanist Organization
There is no justice in America—not for victims of police abuse, and surely not for Blacks and Latinos who are enduring the oppressive apparatus an American “civilization” that long ago shed its last trace
of humanity.

LAPD KETTLES FERGUSON DEMONSTRATORS: A PARTICIPANT’S ACCOUNT – by Robert “Gabe” Gabrielsky
Account by a longtime socialist and labor activist of the arrest by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) of over 100 Ferguson support demonstrators who took to the streets on November 26, and of their inhuman treatment in jail.

FAMILY OF DENVER HOMELESS PREACHER KILLED BY DEPUTIES AWARDED $4.6 MILLION — by Dale Heckerman
Large payouts by Denver sheriffs in deaths of two Black men are tied to race/class structure of U.S.

TOWARDS A MARXIST THEORY OF GENDER? – by Heather Brown and Estelle Cooch
Estelle Cooch interviews Heather Brown, author of the acclaimed book, MARX ON GENDER AND THE FAMILY: A CRITICAL STUDY, on differences between the approaches of Marx and Engels to gender, feminism today, and intersectionality.

ON THE PEOPLE’S CLIMATE MARCH: MARX AND THE METABOLIC INTERACTIONS BETWEEN HUMYNS AND THE ENVIRONMENT — by Cristina A.
This article notes the writer’s experiences at the Peoples Climate March in New York in September and discusses the linkages between climate destabilization and capitalism through a Marxist lens.

GLOBAL LABOUR AND RECENT POPULAR MOVEMENTS — by Richard Abernethy
Trade unions, political parties and more grassroots forms of organisation are discussed with respect to the UK, Thailand, and Cambodia.

SYRIA: REVOLUTIONARIES CAUGHT BETWEEN ISIS AND US IMPERIALISM — Statement of the International Marxist-Humanist Organization
All eyes are on Kobane, Syria, where Kurdish forces, women as well as men, are under threat of extermination from the reactionary ISIS, even as they seek to defend their social gains. They are doing so in the face of several other forces of reaction, whether US imperialism, the genocidal Assad regime, or the virulently anti-Kurdish Turkish regime.

IS THIS THE END OF DEMOCRACY? ON THE MIDDLE EAST AFTER ISIS – by Mehmet Tas
A long-time Turkish activist discusses how the potential unleashed by the Arab Revolutions risked being stifled by the most recent incarnations of Islamic fundamentalism as well as the short sighted
and self-interested policies of the U.S. and NATO, especially when it comes to Syria and Iraq.

A DECLARATION OF 209 SOCIAL ACTIVISTS OF TABRIZ IN SUPPORT OF KOBANI RESISTANCE
Statement by social activists of Tabriz, Iran, on the revolutionary character of the Kurdish movement in Kobani, and its betrayal by all global and regional powers.

HEALTH CARE ONLY IN U.S.A.: THE TOO OFTEN DEADLY AND TRULY ABSURD — by Lenore Daniels
This narrative of an experience in the “health” care system by a leading writer on Black liberation and feminism underlines how today, more than ever, illness in the U.S. is big business and a source of
relentless profit—with the needs of the human individual rendered almost completely superfluous.

***RECENT BOOKS OF INTEREST (with reviews posted on our Literature pages)

MARX AT THE MARGINS: ON ETHNICITY, NATIONALISM, AND NON-WESTERN SOCIETIES – by Kevin Anderson, new edition for India and South Asia: Pinnacle Learning (New Delhi)

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ROSA LUXEMBURG, VOL. I: ECONOMIC WRITINGS 1, edited by Peter Hudis, Verso Books,  NOW IN PAPERBACK

THE PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS OF ANTI-CAPITALISM: ESSAYS ON HISTORY, CULTURE AND DIALECTICAL THOUGHT — by David Black, Studies in Marxism and Humanism Series, Lexington Books, hardcover, with subsequent paperback

MARX’S CONCEPT OF THE ALTERNATIVE TO CAPITALISM – by Peter Hudis, Historical Materialism Series, now in paperback with Haymarket Books

MARX ON GENDER AND THE FAMILY: A CRITICAL STUDY – by Heather Brown, Historical Materialism Series, now in paperback with Haymarket Books

THE DUNAYEVSKAYA-MARCUSE-FROMM CORRESPONDENCE, 1954-1978: DIALOGUES ON HEGEL, MARX, AND CRITICAL THEORY — edited by Kevin B. Anderson and Russell Rockwell, Lexington Books

*******
We have also posted reviews of these and other of our books in a variety of journals, among them INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW OF BOOKS and LINKS: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIALIST RENEWAL

See also our LANGUAGES PAGES for articles and reviews in Indonesian, Spanish, French, and other languages
*******
THE INTERNATIONAL MARXIST-HUMANIST is the webzine of the INTERNATIONAL
MARXIST-HUMANIST ORGANIZATION (IMHO):
http://www.internationalmarxisthumanist.org/
Contact: arise@internationalmarxisthumanist.org

Join our Facebook page: “International Marxist-Humanist Organization: https://www.facebook.com/groups/imhorg/

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

London Campaign Against Police and State Violence Annual Conference

University for Strategic Optimism

LONDON CAMPAIGN AGAINST POLICE AND STATE VIOLENCE ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Date: Sunday 12th October at 1pm

Venue: Richard Hoggart Building Cinema, Richard Hoggart Building,
Goldsmiths (University of London), Lewisham Way, New Cross, London SE14 6NW
Registration 1pm.

London Campaign Against Police and State Violence will be holding our annual conference on the theme of ‘The Right to Life Under Threat by the State’. Everyone is welcome, and admission is free (but donations are welcome).

The full programme will be published shortly. The conference will feature:
Kofi Klu
Raspect Fyabinghi
United Families and Friends Campaign
Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association (JENGbA)
®Movement
Screening of Migrant Media’s new film ‘Burn’
Spoken word

Facebook event is here: https://www.facebook.com/events/293056787547724/

Please RSVP by emailing lcapsv@gmail.com

 

Please share in your networks

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

The Darkest Days: The Truth Behind Britain’s Rush to War, 1914

Books

THE DARKEST DAYS: THE TRUTH BEHIND BRITAIN’S RUSH TO WAR, 1914

By DOUGLAS NEWTON

“A compellingly written, tightly argued, deeply researched and bracingly revisionist study.”– Christopher Clark, author of The Sleepwalkers

“If you want to understand how a Liberal cabinet decided to take Britain to war two days before the German invasion of Belgium, over the protests of a considerable peace movement, read Douglas Newton’s eloquent The Darkest Days: The Truth Behind Britain’s Rush to War, 1914.” – The Independent

————

BOOK DISCUSSION 

AUGUST 4th event: On the centenary of Britain’s declaration of war, Douglas Newton Christopher Clark discuss THE DARKEST DAYS at the London Review Bookshop

As the world commemorates the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War historian Douglas Newton recounts the hidden history of Britain’s decision to enter the conflict. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, including the private papers and correspondence of leading politicians of the time, Newton pays particular attention to the widespread and vehement opposition to the war, both inside parliament and in the country at large, and reveals how Asquith, Edward Grey and Winston Churchill colluded, against the wishes and instincts of many of their parliamentary colleagues, to bring the country into the war, by any means necessary. Douglas Newton will be in conversation with Christopher Clark, author of The Sleepwalkers, one of the most lucid recent accounts of the outbreak of the First World War.

7pm / £10 – for more information and to book tickets: http://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/events/2014/8/the-darkest-days-douglas-newton-and-christopher-clark

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THE DARKEST DAYS shows how the war-hungry leaders and the right-wing press hustled the nation into war, making only the barest efforts to save the peace. As a result the declaration was the result of political negotiation, dishonesty and willful belligerence that split the cabinet and kept the opposition and the nation itself in the dark until it was too late.

Through a forensic study of the personal papers of many of the key figures on both sides of the debate, historian DOUGLAS NEWTON pieces together what really went on in the frenetic weeks between the assassination in Sarajevo and Britain’s declaration of war upon Germany on Tuesday 4 August 1914.

Many recently published histories of Britain’s Great War embrace the conflict as a good war—irresistible, righteous—and popular. It has become almost heretical to offer criticism of Britain’s intervention. This book presents a new critical examination of the government’s choice for war, and weaves into the story an account of those “radicals” and other activists who urged neutral diplomacy in 1914.

http://www.versobooks.com/books/1591-the-darkest-days

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DOUGLAS NEWTON was the Associate Professor of History at University of Western Sydney. He is the author of British Policy and the Weimar Republic 1918–19; Germany 1918-1945: From Days of Hope to Years of Horror; and British Labour, European Socialism and the Struggle for Peace 1889–1914. He lives in Australia.

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“Should Britain have entered the war in 1914? This question has recently aroused controversy. As Douglas Newton shows, it was controversial in 1914, too. This book is a compellingly written, tightly argued, deeply researched and bracingly revisionist study of the decisions that led to British intervention. Newton uproots many hardy myths and reveals the deep divisions within the political elite of a country on the brink of war.”
– Christopher Clark, author of The Sleepwalkers

“Sound and informative.”
– Keith Robbins in praise of British Labour, European Socialism and the Struggle for Peace 1889-1914, Times Literary Supplement

“Newton writes well, and with a feel for the tragedy of the Great War missing in most accounts … the scholarship invested in this work is meticulous.”
– John McDermott, in praise of British Policy and the Weimar Republic 1918-1919, International History Review

“Newton’s history is meticulously researched …”
– Jill Liddington in praise of British Labour, European Socialism and the Struggle for Peace 1889-1914, History Workshop Journal

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HARDBACK: JUNE 2014 / 416 pages / ISBN: 9781781683507 / $34.95 / £20 / $41 (Canada)

ALSO AVAILABLE AS AN E-BOOK

THE DARKEST DAYS is available at a 30% discount (hardback) on our website, with free shipping and bundled ebook. Purchasing details here: http://www.versobooks.com/books/1591-the-darkest-days

 

First published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/new-book-and-london-event-douglas-newton2019s-the-darkest-days-the-truth-behind-britain2019s-rush-to-war-1914

 

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

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Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

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The Papers of the Red Army

THE PAPERS OF THE RED ARMY

The University of Nottingham, UK, would like to offer to another library the microfilm collection “Papers of the Red Army” (for a brief description, see below).

The collection is complete (76 reels), although one box if missing.  The collection duplicates existing holdings in our library.

Libraries interested in further details should please contact Carol Hollier at carol.hollier@nottingham.ac.uk.

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The Papers of the Red Army:  Political and Internal Intelligence Reports, 1918-1921

From the Russian State Military-Historical Archive (RGVIA)

From the time of its establishment, the Red Army served the particular political needs of the Soviet state. During the Civil War (1918-1921), the army conducted extensive intelligence operations not only of counter-revolutionary forces but of their own ranks as well. This recently declassified collection contains unfiltered, unedited intelligence reports — many of them handwritten — from Red Army operatives throughout the country. Included are traditional operational and intelligence reports and evaluations. Of particular interest are the political intelligence reports. These contain surveys of civilian attitudes and assessments of the mood and circumstances of Red Army troops. These reports provide extraordinary opportunities for the scholar to examine the nature of the Soviet military’s apparatus of surveillance, as well as the extent and nature of opposition, both small and large, to the Communist regime.

76 microfilm reels.

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

 

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Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

The SOAS Palestine Studies Series: Call for Manuscripts

Education Crisis

THE SOAS PALESTINE STUDIES SERIES – CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS

WITH I.B.TAURIS PUBLISHERS, LONDON

The SOAS Centre for Palestine Studies (CPS) at the London Middle East Institute (LMEI) has announced the launch of the first, and presently the only, university series in Palestine Studies in the English language. The SOAS Palestine Studies Series will be edited by the CPS and published by I.B. Tauris, the well-known London-based publishing house specialising in Middle East Studies.

The aim is to publish three to five books per year. Manuscripts will be peer-reviewed and selected for publication by the CPS and under its editorial responsibility. Selected authors will get a contract with details on copy-editing and royalties from I.B. Tauris.

The SOAS Palestine Studies Series is open to submissions by academics at various levels of their career, from writings by recognised scholars to monographs derived from PhD theses adapted for publication. Submissions from all countries and from various disciplines are welcome as long as they fall plainly within the category of Palestine Studies. The aim is to publish the first books in the new series in the autumn of 2015. Only manuscripts at an advanced stage of writing and post-examination theses provided along with the examiners’ reports will be considered.

Submissions should be sent in electronic format to Louise Hosking at LMEI (LH2@soas.ac.uk). For enquiries, you may also contact her on +44-20 7898 4330.

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/call-for-manuscripts-the-soas-palestine-studies-series

 

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Revolt

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Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

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The Game of War

Situationism

THE GAME OF WAR

Class Wargames Presents “The Game of War” @ Essex

2:00 PM, June 10th @ the Waiting Room, St Botolphs (http://st-botolphs.org)
The Street with No Name (off Queen Street) Colchester, Essex CO1 2PQ

Class Wargames (http://www.classwargames.net) will come to Essex on June 10th to present “The Game of War,” staging a participatory playing of Guy Debord’s board military-strategy board game.

Class Wargames is playing Guy Debord’s The Game of War using a replica of his original 1977 design for the board game. Guy Debord is celebrated as the chief strategist of the Situationist International and author of the searing critique of the media-saturated society of consumer capitalism: The Society of the Spectacle. What is less well known is that after the French May ’68 Revolution, Debord devoted much of the rest of his life to inventing, refining and promoting what he came to regard as his most important project: The Game of War.

The Game of War is a Clausewitz simulator: a Napoleonic era military strategy game where armies must maintain their communications structure to survive – and where victory is achieved by smashing your opponent’s supply network rather than by taking their pieces. For Debord, The Game of War wasn’t just a game – it was a guide to how people should live their lives within Fordist society. By playing this Clausewitz simulator, revolutionary activists could learn how to fight and win against the oppressors of spectacular society.

Politics is a continuation of war by other means. Wargames are a continuation of politics by other means.

Requisite Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/681989125188070

Guy Debord

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

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Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

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Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Historical Materialism Sydney Conference 2014

Communisation

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM SYDNEY CONFERENCE 2014

CALL FOR PAPERS

STATES, SOCIAL REPRODUCTION, CAPITAL

We call this conference in a historical moment marked, at the level of public discourse, above all by uncertainty in the face of a continuing crisis of both capitalist production and the ideological, political and social forms that have hitherto underpinned it. This uncertainty is expressed, implicitly or explicitly, not just by the managers, functionaries and prognosticators of capital and state, but also by those movements that claim to systemically oppose it.  Additionally, our conference coincides with the centennial of the outbreak of World War I.

Eulogies to bravery aside, this conjuncture – of present distemper and historical disaster – allows us to ask again, and hopefully ask differently, many of the questions considered central to the broad Marxist tradition. The Great War, for many in that tradition, marked the spectacular limit point or exhaustion of a particular configuration of capital accumulation, the result of which – as figures as preeminent as Engels had prophesied – could only be bloody. To what extent do we face a similar limit point today, even if we have thus far been spared the scale of sacrificial slaughter of that previous one?

This question cannot be answered by scholars and activists operating in isolation; instead, it requires sustained theoretical and practical activity across virtually the entire field of Marxist research and practice: the critique of political economy opening out to critiques of the state; examinations of the relationship between the state, capital, and the social movements that contest both; investigations into the specificity of class and its relation to other structural forms of oppression; considerations of the nature and form that a communist revolution will take today (1914 marking too, of course, the failure of one such conception); interrogations of the relevance of imperialism and settler colonialism to the current conjuncture; and critical analyses of the production of nature on a world-scale. To answer or even just correctly pose these questions requires an engagement with Marxism’s multifarious inheritances, but will also imply openness to new data, integration with the experience of new social struggles, and fresh theoretical perspectives informed by these.

We ask for submissions of 250 word abstracts for papers on these and other topics that engage with this broader tradition, critically or otherwise; panel proposals should include short abstracts for each paper coupled with an outline of the panel as a whole. We especially welcome contributions from activists and scholars outside of (or peripheral to) the academy.

 

All submissions should be emailed to hmaustralasia [at] gmail.com.

Website: https://hmaustralasia.org/2014/04/15/historical-materialism-australasia-2014-states-social-reproduction-capital/

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

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