Critical Perspectives on Intersectionality

Occupy London

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON INTERSECTIONALITY

CHICAGO EVENT WITH INTERNATIONAL PARTICIPATION
Critical Perspectives on Intersectionality: Addressing Struggles over Race, Gender, Class, and Ecology
The social theory of intersectionality has gained prominence among and activists and academics as a way to address the question of inclusion and social solidarity that was often overlooked by the traditional Left focus on the working class. Does “intersectionality” deliver on its promise to theorize radical social change in an inclusive way? Does it offer a real alternative to capitalism?  How might intersectionality be understood in the context of contemporary struggles?
In this discussion, panelists will be engaging these questions from various critical perspectives focused on race, gender, class, and ecological struggles.

Speakers:
Lenore Daniels, “The Marginalization of Black Radicalism in the Obama Era” (activist and writer on Cultural Theory, Race and Gender)
Sarah Mason, “From Occupy to Marx: Ecology, Labor, and the New Society” (former activist, Occupy Los Angeles)
Kevin Anderson, “Karl Marx and Intersectionality” (author Marx at the Margins)
Sandra Rein, “The Gendered Subject at the Crossroads” (author Reading Raya Dunayevskaya)
David Black, “Philosophy, Ecology, and Anti-Capitalism” (author, Philosophical Roots of Anti-Capitalism)

Friday, July 25, 6:30 p.m.
Corboy Law Center
25 East Pearson St. Chicago
Room 208
Sponsored by the Loyola University Department of Philosophy
Co-sponsored by the International Marxist-Humanist Organization

See: http://www.internationalmarxisthumanist.org/

**END**

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Marxism and Cultural Studies

Cultural Marxism

MARXISM AND CULTURAL STUDIES

Call for Essays: Culture, Theory and Critique special themed issue on Marxism and Cultural Studies (special thanks to Indiana University’s Cultural Studies Program)

Many accounts of the emergence and development of Cultural Studies accord a central place to Marxism, both as a body of knowledge and as an important ideological component of the New Left. The rediscovery of the writings of Antonio Gramsci, George Luckacs, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno, among others, along with the formation of the Birmingham Centre for Cultural Studies, led to a general renaissance of Marxist theory and cultural analysis, which in turn resulted in ground-breaking studies of working class culture, the political role of new social movements that were not class based, the power of ideology and mass culture in sustaining existing social relations, and critical analyses of state-authoritarianism. As Cultural Studies crossed the Atlantic and gained an institutional foothold in the United States, some have feared that its engagement with Marxism has been diluted through an over emphasis on the subversive potentialities of mass media and consumer capitalism.

Some possible questions to consider:

 * How do we understand the relationship between the base and superstructure today?

* Does ideology critique still have an ongoing usefulness?

* Do globalization and the world recession require new objects of study?

* To what extent does Marxism provide a utopian impulse for existing social movements?

* Do iterations of Cultural Studies in South Asia, Africa, Central and Latin America, the Middle East, and
Eastern Europe retain a commitment to Marxism and how is this work revitalizing the field more broadly?

* Does the Marxist imperative to historicize challenge current paradigms of cultural analysis such as
the “New Formalism”?

* What exactly does a historical materialist methodology enable?

* How do we articulate media analyses with questions of political economy, geo-politics, and activism?

* What is the role of the intellectual in Cultural Studies?

We welcome essays that address any of these issues. The questions are not meant to be proscriptive, however, and we welcome queries about possible article content.

Abstracts (250-500 words) due September 15, 2011; final essays need to be submitted for peer review by October 31, 2011. Length 5,000-7,000 words including notes.

Send proposals and essays to Joan Hawkins, editor and Jen Heusel, editorial assistant ctcjourn@indiana.edu

Culture, Theory and Critique is a refereed, interdisciplinary journal for the transformation and development of critical theories in the humanities and social sciences. It aims to critique and reconstruct theories by interfacing them with one another and by relocating them in new sites and conjunctures. Culture, Theory and Critique’s approach to theoretical refinement and innovation is one of interaction and hybridisation via recontextualisation and transculturation.

 

‘Culture, Theory and Critique’: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/routledge/14735784.html

 

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Historical Materialism and Functional Explanation – an essay by Alexander Rikowski

 

Alexander Rikowski

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AND FUNCTIONAL EXPLANATION – AN ESSAY BY ALEXANDER RIKOWSKI

Does historical materialism need to appeal to functional explanation? If not, how can historical materialism otherwise be made consistent? If so, is this a strength or a weakness?

Alexander Rikowski

An essay written as an undergraduate in the Department of Philosophy, King’s College London

London, June 2010

This essay by Alexander Rikowski can be viewed at:

Rikowski, A. (2010) Historical Materialism and Functional Explanation, an essay written as an undergraduate in the Department of Philosophy, King’s College London, June, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/index.php?page=articles&sub=Historical%20Materialism%20and%20Functional%20Explanation

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New Insights into Gramsci’s Life and Work

Antonio Gramsci

NEW INSIGHTS INTO GRAMSCI’S LIFE AND WORK

New Insights into Gramsci’s Life and Work

Friday, May 28th, 2010

Chancellor’s Hall, Senate House, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU

http://igrs.sas.ac.uk/events/conferences-workshops/gramscis-life-and-work.html

A one-day conference organised by Alessandro Carlucci (Royal Holloway, University of London) in association with the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies (School of Advanced Studies, University of London)

Sponsored by the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust, and by the School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Royal Holloway, University of London

The main aim of the conference is to share and disseminate the results of recent, specialised research on Gramsci. Significant novelties will be presented by leading experts with the aim of overcoming disciplinary boundaries and helping to reduce the gaps between: a) widespread, conventional understandings of Gramsci and up-to-date specialised research; and b) the work on Gramsci’s writings and biography and the use of Gramsci’s theories for understanding current social, political and cultural issues.

Confirmed contributors: Derek Boothman (SSLMIT, University of Bologna), Craig Brandist (University of Sheffield), Fabio Frosini (University of Urbino), Carl Levy (Goldsmiths, University of London), James Martin (Goldsmiths, University of London), Anne Showstack Sassoon (Birkbeck, University of London), and Peter Thomas (member of the editorial board of Historical Materialism).

Entrance: FREE

For further information please contact the organisers at: a.carlucci@rhul.ac.uk mailto:a.carlucci@rhul.ac.uk or igrs@sas.ac.uk mailto:igrs@sas.ac.uk

PROGRAMME:

10.00 am – Coffee and Registration

10.30 am – Introduction

Alessandro Carlucci, ‘Gramsci’s Life and Work: Recent Findings and New Interpretative Trends’

11.00 am – Session I

Chair: Federico Faloppa (University of Reading)

Anne Showstack Sassoon, ‘Gramsci’s Struggle with Language Revisited’

Derek Boothman, ‘Gramsci’s Interest in Language: The Influence of the Dispense di glottologia (1912-13) on the Prison Notebooks’

Craig Brandist, ‘Gramsci’s Politics of Language in the Light of the Soviet Sociological Linguistics of the 1920s and 1930s’

1.00 am – Lunch break

2.00 pm – Session II

Chair: Simone Testa (IGRS, University of London)

Peter Thomas, ‘Hegemony, the Philosophy of Praxis and the Third International’

Fabio Frosini, ‘Reformation, Renaissance and the Rise of the Modern State’

3.20 pm – Tea and biscuits

3.45 pm – Session III

Chair: Anne Showstack Sassoon

Carl Levy, ‘Gramsci and Anarchism’

James Martin, ‘Gramsci and Gobetti: A Case of Elective Affinity?’

Concluding Remarks by the Chair and General Discussion

Refreshments

Update 19th May 2010

Peter D. Thomas talks about Gramsci:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee5U3kFU5g&feature=related

For the book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=210&pid=29354

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