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