Posts tagged: history

Talking shit

What links Karl Marx, William S. Burroughs, Dalit struggles in India and the Yetties' famous Muckspreader Song? Ed Emery writes on the centrality of excrement, both metaphorical and literal, to the modern world.
The Black Atlantic at 30

Published 30 years ago this year, Paul Gilroy's seminal book The Black Atlantic profoundly shaped how we understand race and culture in contemporary society.
Choose your side. Choose your weapons

Published 20 years after the 1984-85 miners' strike that it portrays, David Peace's kaleidoscopic novel GB84 depicted the affective realities of the struggle as it was fought by pickets, policemen. Alexander Curtis asks what the literature can teach us about the past and present of class war.
Carlo Ginzburg: ‘In history as in cinema, every close-up implies an off-screen scene’

The Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg discusses the historical method of microhistory, of which he is an eminent representative, and some themes and concepts of his work.
A Political Education

Alexander Baron, the writer, political activist, journalist, soldier, and prominent figure in mid-twentieth-century British cultural history, is best remembered today as the author of the novels The Human Kind (1953), The Lowlife (1963), and King Dido (1969). In this extract from his recently published memoir Chapters of Accidents, introduced by his son Nick Baron, he recounts his political education in interwar East London.
On the Churchill Front in the Culture Wars

Historian John Newsinger responds to Simon Heffer and Andrew Robert's review of Tariq Ali’s powerful new demolition of the Churchill myth, Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes.
Potential Prehistory

Historian of science Lukas Rieppel considers the connections between geology, prehistory, and imperialism, as part of the "Unlearning Imperialism" Verso roundtable.
Towards a Radical Practice of History: When Can History Repair?

Historian Vazira Zamindar asks if history has the disciplinary tools to practice repair, part of the Verso roundtable "Unlearning Imperialism" considering the work of Ariella Aïsha Azoulay.
Unlearning Imperialism: A Verso Roundtable

A Verso roundtable on Ariella Aïsha Azoulay's Potential History, discussing imperial knowledge, history, art, the possibility of repairing devastated worlds, and above all: what can a radical practice of history look like?
Race, Racism, and Racecraft

Racecraft is not a euphemistic substitute for racism. It is a kind of fingerprint evidence that racism has been on the scene.
Sicily as Autonomous Community

In The Invention of Sicily, Jamie Mackay offers a sweeping history of Sicily from ancient times to the present day. Mackay presents Sicily's history as one of an autonomous community fighting for liberation against their oppressors.
The Economist: Liberalism's Historical Record

Historian Alexander Zevin looks through the pages of the Economist and finds a record of democracy's challenge to liberalism.