Historical Materialism conference

The Journal Historical Materialism will be holding their annual conference next month, at the School of African and Oriental Studies. They haven't got the timetable set up on their website yet, but it's bound to be worth a visit; last year's event was good, and involved some very interesting papers.

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 
compartmentalisation? 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: historicalmaterialism@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 *