‘Crisis and Critique’ Historical Materialism conference 2010

‘Crisis and Critique’: Historical Materialism Annual London Conference
2010
Central London, Thursday 11th to Sunday 14th November

Registration and Provisional Programme Now Available online here

ALL ATTENDEES AND SPEAKERS MUST PRE-REGISTER, PRE-REGISTRATION CLOSES
AT MIDNIGHT ON NOVEMBER 8TH

Notwithstanding repeated invocations of the ‘green shoots of
recovery’, the effects of the economic crisis that began in 2008
continue to be felt around the world. While some central tenets of the
neoliberal project have been called into question, bank bailouts, cuts
to public services and attacks on working people’s lives demonstrate
that the ruling order remains capable of imposing its agenda. Many
significant Marxist analyses have already been produced of the
origins, forms and prospects of the crisis, and we look forward to
furthering these debates at HM London 2010. We also aim to encourage
dialogue between the critique of political economy and other modes of
criticism – ideological, political, aesthetic, philosophical – central
to the Marxist tradition.

In the 1930s, Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht projected a journal
to be called ‘Crisis and Critique’. In very different times, but in a
similar spirit, HM London 2010 aims to serve as a forum for dialogue,
interaction and debate between different strands of critical-Marxist
theory. Whether their focus is the study of the capitalist mode of
production’s theoretical and practical foundations, the unmasking of
its ideological forms of legitimation or its political negation, we
are convinced that a renewed and politically effective Marxism will
need to rely on all the resources of critique in the years ahead.
Crises produce periods of ideological and political uncertainty. They
are moments that put into question established cognitive and
disciplinary compartmentalisations, and require a recomposition at the
level of both theory and practice. HM London 2010 hopes to contribute
to a broader dialogue on the Left aimed at such a recomposition, one
of whose prerequisites remains the young Marx’s call for the ‘ruthless
criticism of all that exists’.