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[Workshop] New Agendas for Radical History(January 29,30)

(1)

■Date & Time

Monday, January 29, 2018/ 14:00~

■Venue

Room 960, Bldg.#14, Waseda Campus

■Lecturer

Titas Chakraborty (Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Texas at Austin)

Titas Chakraborty completed her Ph.D. at University of Pittsburgh in 2016. She is working on her book project,”Mobile Workers of the Companies: Labor, Migration and Resistance in Bengal, 1650-1837.” She is also currently co-editing a book titled, “Runaways: Desertion and Mobility in Global labor History, 1650-1850.” She is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin in 2017-2018.

■Title

An Agenda for Radical History of Labor – an Indian perspective

■Abstract

Labor History as a sub-field of Indian historiography developed out of the trade union movement of early twentieth century South Asia. Even though the trade union movement remained an important segment of the organized Indian left, labor history never formed an important part of the otherwise rich Marxist historiography of India. In this talk, I will first discuss the important debates within Indian Marxist historiography, and how they have referred to labor, even when history of labor was not explicitly central to these debates. Secondly, I will talk about the subaltern history project which, apart from launching an attack on Marxist historiography, posed serious problems in writing labor history. Thirdly, I will describe the project of New Labor history, which, heavily inspired by the labor history writing of the Anglo-American New Left tradition, rejuvenated the field of labor history, surmounting the challenges posed by the subaltern school. Critically assessing the gains and losses of this long, and many-faceted historiography of Indian labor in the light of the present socio-economic and political conditions – neo-liberal informalisation of Indian labor market and the resounding electoral victory of the Hindu majoritarian Far Right – I will conclude by proposing, what I believe is an agenda for radical history (i.e., history that will be of use to anti-capitalist, anti-communal/fascist, and anti-imperialist movements) of Indian labor.

(2)

■Date & Time

Tuesday, January 30, 2018/ 14:00~

■Venue

Room 960, Bldg.#14, Waseda Campus

■Lecturer

Jesse Olsavsky (Ph.D. candidate, University of Pittsburgh)

Jesse Olsavsky is a PhD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh. He studied history and German literature at the University of Toledo, before coming to study at the University of Pittsburgh. He is mainly interested in labor history, the history of social movements, intellectual history from the bottom up, and the history of American imperialism. His dissertation explores the ways vigilance committees transformed the abolitionist movement by organizing across races, classes, and genders, and by learning directly from the thousands of fugitive slaves whom they worked with on a daily basis.

■Title

The Left, the “Abolitionist Tradition” and the Agendas for Radical History

■Abstract

In the mid-1980s the British New Left Historians, led by E.P. Thompson, convened in the United States to discuss their “agendas for radical history,” which were considered important manifestoes for radical historians in the English-speaking world. Thompson and his colleagues offered many portentous suggestions, based upon their praxis as historians of England, that can still guide radical historians of all stripes. Yet they also left out a some things from their “agendas.” They spoke little of radical historical agendas in places outside the west. They also said nothing about the violent American empire that hosted them, nor of the motley lot of activist-historians who looked to the black proletariat’s international struggle against slavery for insight and inspiration in their fights against American imperialism and other imperialisms.

Throughout the 20th century, movements and writers of the Left, from various places in the world, studied the “abolitionist tradition,” particularly the US and Haitian traditions, to find political inspiration and theoretical guidance. Diverse Left historians, from C.L.R. James to Staughton Lynd, rewrote the history of the struggle against slavery. In the process, they helped rethink the histories of slavery, capitalism, colonialism, and the various movements that attempted to alter or abolish these social systems. This talk will survey this history of history writing, show its relation to other forms of “history from below,” and suggest (tentatively) some ways carry on further “agendas for radical history.

■Coordinator

Naoyuki UMEMORI (Professor, Faculty of Political Science and Economics)

Manuel YANG (Junior Researcher, ORIS)

■Language

English

■Audience

Students, faculty, staff and general public

■Admission

Free

Dates
  • 0129

    MON
    2018

    0130

    TUE
    2018

Place

Room 960, Bldg.#14, Waseda Campus

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