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.
After the Event. Prospects and Retrospects of Revolution
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
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
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.
Further information
Ticketing
Open
Cost
Free
Open to
All
Organiser
Narges Ansari, Myriam Lamrani, Charlotte Loris-Rodionoff and Kaya Uzel
UCL Anthropology