The Academy of Global Humanities and Critical Theory and
The Africana Studies Department of Brown University Presents 

 

TOWARDS A GLOBAL HISTORY OF POLITICAL CONCEPTS

THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS AND PRACTICES

 

 

International Conference

Brown University, Providence (RI)

April 6th and 7th 2018

 

Convenors: Anthony Bogues and Raffaele Laudani

Keynote speakers:
Wang Hui (Tsinghua University), Lawrie Balfour (UVA), Murad Idris (UVA), Prathama Banerjee (CSDS, Dehli),
Thieven Reddy (University of Cape Town), Brian Meeks (Brown University), Ronald Judy (University of Pittsburgh)

 

FRIDAY, APRIL 6

RESPONSES TO THESES

 
9.30-10.00 am
Registration
 
10.00 – 11.00
Welcome Remarks
DEAN KEVIN McLAUGHLIN
KEYNOTE: ANTHONY BOGUES and RAFFAELE LAUDANI
 
11.00 am – 1.30 pm
Roundtable on POLITICAL CONCEPTS
 
1.30 – 2.30 pm
Lunch
 

2.30 – 4.45 pm
Roundtable on POLITICAL CONCEPTS (continued)

1.30 – 2.30 pm
Lunch
 
5.00 – 5.30 pm
Closing remarks
ANTHONY BOGUES and RAFFAELE LAUDANI
 
6.00 – 8.30 pm
Dinner (Faculty Club, 1 Bannister street)
 
FRIDAY, APRIL 6

STUDIES IN THE GLOBAL HISTORY OF POLITICAL CONCEPTS

 
10.30-11.00 am
Registration
 
11.00 am – 1.00 pm
PANEL 1
 
BEDOUR ALAGRAA
Cruel Mathematics and the Everyday Catastrophe of the Plantation
 
DHRITMAN CHAKRABORTY
“Provincializing Europe,” but How to Provincialize? New Methods of Thinking Postcolonial Political in India
 
FELICIA BISHOP DENAUD
The Last Maroon and the Question of Haitian Soverignty 
 
YICHAN ZHOU
Civil Disobedience: Rethink Western Concept with the Non-Western Experiences
 
1.00 – 2.00 pm
Lunch
 

2.00 – 3.30 pm
PANEL 2

PAUL GUTIERREZ
Working for Freedom: Work as Bildung in Hegel's Master/Slave Dialectic
 
SEMENEH ASFAW
"Born of the Times:" Towards a Popular History of Modernity in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, c. 1950s-1974
 
JOBY MATHEW
Margins of Modernity: Reframing the Trajectories of Spatio-Temporal Notions
 
3.30 – 3.45 pm
Break
 

3.45 – 5.15 pm
PANEL 3

 
ISABELLA CONSOLATI
A Global History of the Concept of State: Brunner and Spivak 
 
LUIS RAMOS
The Poetics of Indipendence: Enlightenment Polemics, Jesuit Writing and Insurgent Political Thought in Spanish America
 
ABHISHEK KAICKER
Rethinking Sovereignty in Precolonial South Asia: The Mughal Discourse of Daulat
 
5.15 – 5.45
Closing remarks
ANTHONY BOGUES and RAFFAELE LAUDAN
 
6.00 – 8.30 pm
Dinner (Faculty Club, 1 Bannister street)
 
 

 

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Academy of Global Humanities and Critical Theory has recently launched a research project: Towards a New Global History of Political Thought, coordinated by Anthony Bogues (Brown University) and Raffaele Laudani (University of Bologna). The research group challenges the traditional borders of the history of modern political thought positing a global perspective which displaces the conventional Eurocentric frames. This perspective implies a process of «displacement» and «disorientation» of the cartographic and theoretical framework of the modern as a political concept while going beyond forms of methodological nationalism that has characterized many social and political analysis of political modernity and globalization. More precisely, it means both the provincialization of classical political concepts which are based upon theories originated in Europe. The opening up of the borders of the classical definition and scope of political concepts, and the awareness of their emergence and functioning in a steady confrontation with the challenges posed by the colonial world, by conquest, the deployment of new technologies of rule and the exploitation of the «rest of the World» creates new grounds for exploring the history of political thought. Such a frame goes beyond the conventional notions of liberalism, or conservatism as well as conventional forms of critical theory. It means assuming a decentered perspective in order to grasp the tensions and contradictions which characterize modern political concepts and their histories. On the other hand , it aims at developing a new global lexicon of fundamental political concepts in an effort to grapple with both the history of political thought and to understand the present. Based on the Theses on a Global History of Political Concepts, this first conference aims at discussing the methodological and epistemological framework of a new «global history of political concepts». We invite papers on topics including, but not limited to:

• Spatial and temporal logics of modernity

• Non- Western and new approaches to intellectual/conceptual history

• Reframing the archives: subaltern historiographies and new sources for the history of political thought

• Alternative intellectual and political traditions (especially those emerged in former colonial nations and in contexts of racial domination)

• Reframing the conceptual history of political modernity and of capitalism

• Thinking about the present through alternative modes of political thought

• Any research in political concepts and/or political thinkers assuming the global perspective as its methodological framework

 

 

Interested scholars are required to complete and submit their application to politicalthought17@gmail.com with an abstract (max. 300 words) for a 20-minute presentation and a short CV (max. 2 pages):
 

The deadline for submission is February 10, 2018 at 3.00 pm (GMT +1) 

Selected applicants will be notified by March 1st, 2018.

Limited grants are available to assist presenters with travel, room, and board.

Please mention in your application if you wish to be considered for a travel bursary and if your participation is contingent upon receiving one.

For further information, please email bedour_alagraa@brown.edu.