HISTORICAL MATERIALISM ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2008

MANY MARXISMS

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2008

7-9 November 2008

School of Oriental and African Studies, Central London

Organised in collaboration with the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher
Memorial Prize Committee and with Socialist Register.

Organised in association with the International Initiative for the
Promotion of Political Economy, the journal Situations and the Journal
of Agrarian Change, and with the assistance of the Faculty of Law and
Social Sciences of SOAS.

Ever since its foundation in 1997, Historical Materialism has sought
to contribute to the intellectual recomposition of the global Left by
serving as an international venue for critical Marxist research. The
journal's initial wager - that Marxism remains a vital, and
heterogeneous and many-faceted political and theoretical tradition -
has been borne out in a conjuncture where Marxist thinkers have amply
demonstrated the critical resources at their disposal (witness recent
debates on imperialism and neoliberalism) . Within the academy, the
facile dismissal of Marxism seems to have run out of steam, and the
attitudes of new generations of students and researchers have changed
accordingly. Marxist intellectuals are no longer simply forced to
survive in hostile conditions or to retreat into isolated academic
subcultures, despite an often adverse global political context. In
this setting, they face new challenges, which this conference seeks to
address

How can we develop the plurality of Marxist debates, fields and
schools without making concessions to eclecticism, narcissism or
compartmentalisatio n? How do we square the concrete multiplicity of
Marxisms with the strong commonalities in intellectual vocabularies,
theoretical sources and political aims? Hasn't the question of the
diversity of Marxism - of many Marxisms - accompanied the tradition’s
entire development, a testament both to its internationalist horizon,
and to the inexhaustible potential of its many critical insights and
conceptual formulations? What strategies can allow us to confront, and
perhaps overcome, some of the disparities or even misunderstandings
born of these processes of differentiation?

Having tried to foster a form of critical cosmopolitanism and debate
in past conferences, bringing together thinkers working in different
fields, and out of different traditions, this year's Historical
Materialism conference wants to emphasise problems and opportunities
raised by the existence of 'Many Marxisms'. To this end, it aims to
take stock of recent developments in Marxist thought, surveying the
most vibrant recent debates; to confront critical moments in the
historical development of Marxism; to identify crucial concepts and
areas of research that can cut across any preconceived academic
specialisation or geographical isolation of Marxism; to reflect on the
ways in which Marxism has and continues to intervene in mainstream
intellectual debates; and, finally, to generate a space in which the
outlines of the many twenty-first century Marxisms may be delineated.

THE FULL TIMETABLE AND ONLINE REGISTRATION DETAILS WILL BE AVAILABLE
SOON

For more details, please contact: historicalmateriali sm@soas.ac. uk

THEMES COVERED WILL INCLUDE:

Approaching Passive Revolutions * Art and Capitalism * Aspects of
Imperialism * Base and Superstructure * Beyond Global Value Chain
Analysis in Commodity Studies * Bolshevism: Yesterday and Tomorrow *
Capitalism / Knowledge Capitalism * Capitalism and Architecture *
Climate Change, Sustainability and Socialism * Contemporary Radical
Thought and Marxism: Agamben, Holloway, Zizek * Early Modern
Capitalism * Ecological Crisis and Marxist Theory * Everyday Life *
Finance and Neo-Liberalism * Financialisation and Crisis * Food Crisis
* From the Grundrisse to Capital * Future of World Capitalism *
Historical Materialism and Late Development * Historiography in the
Development of Marxism * International Financial Institutions * Is
Today's Capitalism Actually-Existing Barbarism? * Labour-Process and
Resistance * Latin American Left Today * Learning from Enemies and
Rivals: Schmitt, Strauss, Weber * Life, Politics & Capitalism * Many
Marxisms and India * Many Marxisms: Key Figures * Many Marxisms:
Problems and Polemics * Marx and Fetishism * Marx on World Economy and
World Politics * Marxism and Cinema: Film Noir and Neo-Noir * Marxism
and Metropolitics * Marxism and Philosophy * Marxism and the Sciences
* Marxism Outside the West * Marxism, Feminism and Women’s Politics *
Marxisms and Literature * Marxisms and Religion * Marxisms and
Southern Africa * Marxisms and Violences: Gender and Race * Marxist
Theories of Practice * Modes of Foreign Relations * Monetary Policy
and Banking under Neoliberalism * Money * Negativity and Revolution *
North East Asian Marxisms and Socialisms * On the Concept of Surplus
Populations * Perspectives from Althusser * Perspectives from Marx’s
‘Jewish Question’ * Philosophies of Revolt and Revolution *
Philosophy in the Early Marx * Political Categories of Marxism *
Political Economy and Economics Today * Politics of the Promotion of
Global Competitiveness * Racism, Class and Politics * Restructuring,
Capital and Labour * Revolutionary Politics in the Middle East *
Sexual Liberation: Historical Materialist Approaches * Situationism at
the Limits: Must we Burn Debord? * Socialism in Search of an Economic
System * State in the Bolivarian revolution * Theories of Class *
Theories of Imperialism * Time, Temporality, History * Transformations
in the Neoliberal State * Uneven and Combined Development: Towards a
Marxist Theory of ‘the International’? * US Financial Power in
Crisis * Utopianism * Value: Political and Economic Dimensions *
‘Western’ Marxism and the Anti-Colonial World/Intellectuals *
Windows on Empire: Perspectives from History, Culture and Political
Economy * Workerism: a Generation Later *

PARTICIPANTS INCLUDE:

Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi, Gilbert Achcar, Talat Ahmed, Greg Albo, Jamie
Allinson, Kevin Anderson, Ricardo Antunes, Giovanni Arrighi, Sam
Ashman, Antonio Carmona Báez, Richard Bailey, Metin Bal, Colin Barker,
Kate Bayliss, Pınar Bedirhanoğlu, Mike Beggs, Riccardo Bellofiore,
Aaron Benanav, Ted Benton, Henry Bernstein, Cyrus Bina, Werner
Bonefeld, Mark Bould, Pepijn Brandon, Peter Bratsis, Robert Brenner,
Dennis Broe, Dick Bryan, Ergun Bulut, Verity Burgmann, Alex
Callinicos, Paul Cammack, Mauro Farnesi Camellone, Al Campbell, Bob
Cannon, Gavin Capps, Thomas Carmichael, Emilia Castorina, Maria Elisa
Cevasco, Hsiu-Man Chen, Vivek Chibber, Alexander Chryssis, Martin
Cobian, Peter Custers, John Darwin, Neil Davidson, Charles Davis,
Chuck Davis, Gail Day, Roni Demirbag, Radhika Desai, Pat Devine, Paulo
dos Santos, Peter Drucker, Jean-Numa Ducange, Gérard Duménil, Nick
Dyer-Witheford, Timm Ebner, Bolivar Echeverria, Juliane Edler, Ersin
Vedat Elgur, Katsuhiko Endo, Sara R. Farris, Lucy Ferguson, Don
Filtzer, Ben Fine, Robert Fine, Bridget Fowler, Carl Freedman, Alan
Freeman, Andrea Fumagalli, Cristina Morini, Lindsey German, Melanie
Gilligan, Ruth Wilson Gilmour, Saroj Giri, Richard Godden, Maya
Gonzalez, Jamie Gough, Peter Gowan, Kevin Gray, Nick Gray, Chris
Harman, Barbara Harriss-White, Owen Hatherley, Cristoph Hermann, Andy
Higginbottom, Mike Hill, Christian Høgsbjerg, Evren Hosgor, Nik
Howard, David Jack, Elinor Jean, Oliver Jelinski, Nicholas Joll,
Ismail Karatepe, Ken Kawashima, Paul Kellogg, Geoff Kennedy, Sami
Khatib, Aykut Kilic, Donald Kingsbury, Nick Knight, Martijn Konings,
Michael Krätke, Rick Kuhn, Ishay Landa, Tim Lang, Spyros Lapatsioras,
Paul LeBlanc, Sergio Lessa, Alex Levant, Peter Linebaugh, Alex Loftus,
Rob Lucas, Dennis Maeder, Matteo Mandarini, Christian Marazzi,
Jonathan Martineau, Paul Mattick, David Mayer, Andrew McGettigan,
Philip McMichael, David McNally, James Meadway, John Milios, Owen
Miller, Andrew Milner, Dimitris Milonakis, John Molyneux, David Moore,
Cristina Morini, Adam Morton, Zwi Negator, Susan Newman, Jörg Nowak,
Benjamin Noys, Bertel Nygaard, Bridget O'Laughlin, Keith O’Regan,
Sebnem Oguz, Ulrich Oslender, Ceren Özselçuk, Maria Cristina Soares
Paniago, Leo Panitch, F. Papadatos, Juan Pablo Painceira Paschoa, Leda
Maria Paulani, Simon Pirani, Iain Pirie, Nina Power, Gonzalo Pozo-
Martin, Thomas Purcell, Diana Raby, Michael Rafferty, Geert Reuten,
Paul Reynolds, Ben Richardson, John Riddell, John Roberts, Bruce
Robinson, John Rose, Thomas Sablowski, Spyros Sakellaropoulos, Jorgen
Sandemose, Saskia Sassen, Michael Sayeau, Sean Sayers, David
Schwartzmann, Alan Sears, Lynne Segal, Ben Selwyn, Sanjay Seth, Stuart
Shields, Nicola Short, Joe Sim, Rick Simon, Subir Sinha, Panagiotis
Sotiris, Dimitris P. Sotiropoulos, Kerstin Stakemeier, Guido Starosta,
Marcel Stoetzler, Robert Stolz, Gaspar Miklós Tamás, Bruno Tinel,
Peter Thomas, Massimiliano Tomba, Alberto Toscano, Greg Tuck, Mehmet
Ufuk Tutan, Kees van der Pijl, Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, Carlo
Vercellone, Danga Vileisis, Sherryl Vint, Satnam Virdee, Andriana
Vlachou, Elisa Waeyenberge, Jeffery R. Webber, Dominic Wetzel, Adrian
Wilding, Evan Calder Williams, Frieder Otto Wolf, Andrew Wright, Steve
Wright, Galip Yalman, Iván Zatz