+please forward/apologies for cross-posting+ * * *Black Marxism 30 Years On: Theorizing Racial Capitalism*
Thirty years ago, Cedric Robinson's Black Marxism demonstrated the inherent, central role of racialization and racism for the origin, expansion, and perpetuation of capitalism. This theory of racial capitalism has since oriented a new generation of scholars, not between Marxist and black radical traditions, but toward the creation of something new. Theoretical and methodological recognition of racial-capitalism-as-capitalism-itself has engendered unexpected and significant insight into our work on critical geographies of economic restructuring and as scholar-activists. Putting Robinson’s work in dialogue with that of Stuart Hall (1980), Louis Althusser (1971), Antonio Gramsci (1971), and others offers insight into the myriad ways in which racialization, as an essential tool of capitalist class formation, capital accumulation, and the geographical expansion of the capitalist mode of production, has, in different spatio-temporal moments, been articulated through distinct social formations and rendered hegemonic. Taking up an invitation to “mess with the project” (Katz 2006), a framework of racial capitalism allows us to render visible topographies of difference and lived experience, offering a necessary and generative lens into the contradictory and dialectical relationship between capital and the state, as well as insights into how those forces produce and reproduce “group-differentiated exposure to premature death” (Gilmore 2007). In this session, we seek to engage with other scholars who are drawing upon the diffuse and nascent theoretical work on racial capitalism to build common ground and share insight into the strengths and limitations of our approaches. We are particularly interested in papers related to: - borders and migrations of labor and capital - scalar dimensions of racialization processes - subaltern, indigenous, and postcolonial subjectivities - historical and ethnographic work outside the United States - non-academic political praxis References: Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. 2007. Golden Gulag. Hall, Stuart. 1980. “Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance.” Katz, Cindi. 2006. “Messing with the Project,” in David Harvey: A Critical Reader. Robinson, Cedric. 2000 [1983]. Black Marxism. Please send proposed titles and abstracts of up to 250 words by October 15th to both Annie Spencer (aspen...@gc.cuny.edu) and Neil Agarwal ( nagar...@gc.cuny.edu).
