The Center of Global Culture and Communication (An interdisciplinary initiative of Northwestern University’s School of Communication)
& Center for Transcultural Studies

jointly present

‘Questioning the Present: An Online Public Forum on
 Elementary Aspects of the Political: Histories from the Global South
(Duke University Press, 2020)

Prathama Banerjee
(History and Political Theory,
Center for the Study of Developing Societies-CSDS, New Delhi)

Respondents
Humberto Beck
Center for International Studies, El Colegio de México
Murad Idris
Political Science, University of Michigan
Rochona Majumdar
South Asian Languages and Civilizations/ Cinema & Media Studies, University of Chicago

 ON ZOOM, Friday, February 3, 2023, 10:00 am to 12:00 pm CST

Register https://northwestern.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYtd-GqqT0tG9RzwmBIV3DZ2hMmlSUeJKlG

In Elementary Aspects of the Political Prathama Banerjee moves beyond postcolonial and decolonial critiques of European political philosophy to rethink modern conceptions of “the political ” from the perspective of the global South. Drawing on Indian and Bengali practices and philosophies from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Banerjee identifies four elements of the political: the self, action, the idea, and the people. She examines selfhood in light of precolonial Indic traditions of renunciation and realpolitik; action in the constitutive tension between traditional conceptions of karma and modern ideas of labor; the idea of equality as it emerges in the dialectic between spirituality and economics; and people in the friction between the structure of the political party and the atmospherics of fiction and theater. Throughout, Banerjee reasserts the historical specificity of political thought and challenges modern assumptions about the universality, primacy, and self-evidence of the political. In formulating a new theory of the political, Banerjee gestures toward a globally salient political philosophy that displaces prevailing Western notions of the political masquerading as universal.

The Center of Global Culture and Communication (An interdisciplinary initiative of Northwestern University’s School of Communication) & the Center for Transcultural Studies

jointly present

‘Questioning the Present: An Online Public Forum on
The Populist Century’
(Polity Press, 2021)

Pierre Rosanvallon
(Modern and Contemporary Political History, Collège de France)

At a time when the words and slogans of the left have lost much of their power to inspire, Pierre Rosanvallon takes populism for what it is: the rising ideology of the twenty-first century. In The Populist Century he develops a rigorous theoretical account of populism, distinguishing five key features that make up populist political culture; he retraces its history in modern democracies from the mid-nineteenth century to the present; and he offers a well-reasoned critique of populism, outlining a robust democratic alternative. This wide-ranging and insightful account of the theory and practice of populism will be of great interest to students and scholars in politics and the social sciences and to anyone concerned with the key political questions of our time.

Respondents
Michael Sandel (Professor of Government, Harvard University)
Charles Taylor (Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, McGill University)
Nadia Urbinati (Professor of Political Science, Columbia University)

ON ZOOM,
Friday, December 2
10:00 am to 12:00 pm CST
Register Here

The Center of Global Culture and Communication (An interdisciplinary initiative of Northwestern University’s School of Communication) & the Center for Transcultural Studies

Jointly present

‘Questioning the Present: An Online Public Forum on

History 4° Celsius: Search for Method in the Age of Anthropocene‘  

(Duke University Press, 2020)

Ian Baucom

(English, Provost, University of Virginia)

In History 4° Celsius Ian Baucom continues his inquiries into the place of the Black Atlantic in the making of the modern and postmodern world. Putting black studies into conversation with climate change, Baucom outlines how the ongoing concerns of critical race, diaspora, and postcolonial studies are crucial to understanding the Anthropocene. He draws on materialist and postmaterialist thought, Sartre, and the science of climate change to trace the ways in which evolving political, cultural, and natural history converge to shape a globally destructive force. Identifying the quest for limitless financial gain as the primary driving force behind both the slave trade and the continuing increase in global greenhouse gas emissions, Baucom demonstrates that climate change and the conditions of the Black Atlantic, colonialism, and the postcolony are fundamentally entwined.

Respondents

Prathama Banerjee (History, Center for the Study of Developing Societies <CSDS>, New Delhi)

Claire Colebrook (English, The Pennsylvania State University)

Debjani Ganguly (English, University of Virginia)

ON ZOOM, October 7, 10:00 am to 12:00 pm C.T.

Register 

https://northwestern.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcqf-ypqD8oGtciND8mC-lOqmKoKKGM0sTv