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After the Event. Prospects and Retrospects of Revolution

15 May 2019–17 May 2019, 9:00 am–2:30 pm

After the Event - Prospects and Retrospects of Revolution

A three-day international conference that brings together some of the most influential scholars of revolution who will examine the dynamics through which revolutions are continuously made and unmade long after they have first taken place.

Event Information

Open to

All

Organiser

Narges Ansari, Myriam Lamrani, Charlotte Loris-Rodionoff and Kaya Uzel – UCL Anthropology

Location

UCL Anthropology - 14 Taviton Street, WC1H 0BW
SPACE - 129-131 Mare St, E8 3RH
London
WC1H 0BW
United Kingdom

In what ways do revolutions continue to shape people’s lives in their wake and in what manners are revolutionary events in turn shaped by subsequent political practice and discourse? How can we engage conceptually and ethnographically with the complex permutations that radical political projects undergo over time, their unexpected and perplexing consequences? What are the implications of the study of revolution for anthropology more generally and how can anthropology contribute to wider debates about the very possibility of revolutionary futurity in our purportedly post-revolutionary age?

These are some of the questions that this three-day international conference will address by exploring new departures in the anthropology of revolution. 

Keynotes on 15-16 May at UCL Anthropology:

  • 15 May Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi Revolution, Historical Possibilities, and the Perils of “Progressive” Politics
  • 16 May Alpa Shah Why I Write: In a Climate Against Intellectual Dissidence

Book now

Please note that the final day of the conference (17 May) will be held at SPACE in Hackney. Tickets for the last day have to reserved separately by following the link below.  

Keynotes on 17 May at SPACE:

  • 17 May David Lan What goes around, comes around –  Late Reflections on the Chimurenga

Book now

Programme

15 May 9:00 - 17:00

Department of Anthropology, Daryll Forde Seminar Room, 2nd Floor, 14 Taviton Street, London WC1H OBW

09:10 - 09:30 Welcome and Introductory Remarks

09:30 - 10:45 Keynote by Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi (Princeton University) Revolution, Historical Possibilities, and the Perils of “Progressive” Politics

10:45 - 10:55 Coffee Break

11:00 - 13:30 Panel 1: The Tragic Turns of Revolution: Defeat, Failure, Dissipation

11:00 - 11:20 Brian Meeks (Brown University): The Caribbean in the Aftermath of the Grenadian Revolution: Defeat, Tragedy and the Search for Optimism in the Dark Tunnel of Hegemonic Dissolution

11:20 - 11:40 Alice Wilson (University of Sussex): Defeated Revolutionaries, Lasting Legacies: the Afterlife of Revolution in Dhufar, Oman

11:40 - 11:50 Coffee Break

11:50 - 12:10 David Cooper (UCL): The Remains of Revolution: Disagreements about Revolutionary Failure in Nicaragua

12:10 - 12:30 David Nugent (Emory University): The ‘Revolution Before the Revolution’: Radical Organizing Across the Longue Durée in Twentieth-Century Peru

12:30 - 13:30 Discussion

13:30 - 14:30 Lunch Break

14:30 - 17:00 Panel 2: When Utopia is banal: Immanence and Transcendence in the Revolutionary Imagination

14:30 - 14:50 Samuli Schielke (ZMO Berlin): The search for a normal life in Egypt after 2013

14:50 - 15:10 Martin Holbraad (UCL): The house of spirits: an afterlife of revolutionary care in Cuba

15:10 - 15:20 Coffee Break

15:20 - 15:40 Igor Cherstich (UCL): Killing Time: Cigarettes, Tea and post-revolutionary Laziness in Libya

15:40 - 16:00 Piers Vitebsky (Cambridge): How can we Recognise when a Revolution has Taken Place?

16:05 - 17:00 Discussion

16 May  9:30 - 17:00

Department of Anthropology, Daryll Forde Seminar Room, 2nd Floor, 14 Taviton Street, London WC1H OBW

09:30 - 10:45 Keynote by Alpa Shah (LSE): Why I Write: In a Climate Against Intellectual Dissidence

10:45 - 10:55 Coffee Break
                
11:00 - 13:30 Panel 3: Revolution Through the Looking-Glass: Imaginary Horizons and Temporal Visions

11:00 - 11:20 Orin Starn (Duke University US): After the Revolution: Rethinking Peru’s Shining Path

11:20 - 11:40 Francesco Vacchiano (ICS-U Lisboa): ‘The Spirit of the Revolution’: Unfinished Consequences of the Revolt Among Activists of the 20 February Movement in Morocco

11:40 - 11:50 Coffee Break

11:50 - 12:10 Gabriele vom Bruck: ‘Transfer of Presence’: Photographic Articulations of Lived Experiences and Unfinished Pasts in the Context of the Yemeni Revolution of 1962

12:10 - 12:30 Mary Elaine Hegland (Santa Clara University): Revolution in the Field: After the Event in Aliabad, Iran

12:30 - 13:30 Discussion 

13:30 - 14:30 Lunch Break  

14:30 - 17:00 Panel 4: Enduring Aesthetics. Memory and Sensual Perceptions of Past Revolutions

14:30 - 14:50 Ileana Selejan (UCL): ¡Patria libre y vivir! Photography and Protest in Nicaragua

14:50 - 15:10 Jessica Winegar (Northwestern University): The Aesthetic as Revolution’s Ambiguous Battleground: Notes from Egypt

15:10 - 15:20 Coffee Break 

15:20 - 15:40 Yolanda Covington-Ward (University of Pittsburgh): Embodied Revolutions: Body Politics, Religion, and Subject-Making in Postcolonial Congo

15:40 - 16:00 Rafael Sánchez (Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva): Humpty Dumpty Politics. Post-Truth Revolutionary Populism in Venezuela (and Elsewhere)

16:00 - 17:00 Discussion

17 May 10:00 - 14:30

SPACE, 129-131 Mare Street, London E8 3RH

10:00 - 10:45 Private View Morphologies of Invisible Agents

10:45 - 12:00 Keynote speech by David Lan (LSE/The Young Vic): What goes around, comes around – Late Reflections on the Chimurenga

12:00 - 12:30 Refreshments/ sandwich lunch

12:30 - 14:30 ‘Talkin’ about Revolution’: A roundtable discussion with anthropologists, historians and sociologists, including Martin Holbraad (UCL), Caroline Humphrey (Cambridge), Bruce Kapferer (Bergen), Nicola Miller (UCL), and Bjørn Thomassen (Roskilde)

After the Event is sponsored and hosted by the European Research Council research project Comparative Anthropologies of Revolutionary Politics (CARP), led by Martin Holbraad and based at UCL. It is organised by Narges Ansari, Myriam Lamrani, Charlotte Loris-Rodionoff, and Kaya Uzel, who are members of the project’s research team.