Historical Materialism Toronto 2014 Conference Program

HM TORONTO 2014

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HM TORONTO 2014

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM TORONTO CONFERENCE MAY 8 – MAY 11, 2014

YORK UNIVERSITY

CONTENTS

OVERVIEW OF HM TORONTO 4

PROGRAM SUMMARY 5

FULL CONFERENCE PROGRAM 6

THANK YOU 30

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OVERVIEW OF HM TORONTO

Confronting Crisis: Left Praxis in the Face of Austerity, War and Revolution

Historical Materialism ConferenceYork University, Toronto, CanadaMay 8 – 11th, 2014

Confronted with a global context of austerity, exploitation, imperialist aggression, ongoing colonialism, and ecological crises, the world has been witness to growing social and political struggles over the past decade.

A wide range of rural- and urban-based labour and social movements have fought back against the current ‘Age of Austerity,’ while new modes and geographies of resistance against dispossession and tyranny continue to inspire social change in the Global South.

Against this backdrop, the 2014 Historical Materialism conference at Toronto’s York University will aim to contribute to a collective discussion on how to extend and revitalize Left critique and praxis in the current conjuncture.

Plenary speakers:

Haroon Akram-Lodhi, Farshad Araghi, David Austin, Himani Bannerji, Tithi Bhattacharya, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Peter Kulchyski, Jason Moore, Richard Seymour, Panagiotis Sotiris, Lise Vogel, and Judith Whitehead.

HM TORONTO 2014

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PROGRAM SUMMARY

THURSDAY MAY 8, 2014

5:00-7:00pm Opening Plenary7:30pm Opening Reception

FRIDAY MAY 9, 2014

9:30-11:00am Panels [A] [B] [C] [D] [E] [F] [G] [H] [I]11:15-12:45pm Panels [A] [B] [C] [D] [E] [F] [G] [H] [I]12:45-2:00pm Lunch2:00-3:30pm Panels [A] [B] [C] [D] [E] [F] [G] [H] [I]3:45-5:15pm Panels [A] [B] [C] [D] [E] [F] [G] [H] 5:30-7:30pm Plenary

SATURDAY MAY 10, 2014

9:30-11:00am Panels [A] [B] [C] [D] [E] [F ] [G] [H] 11:15-12:45pm Panels [A] [B] [C] [D] [E] [F ] [G] [H]12:45-2:15pm Lunch & Boycott, Divestment and

Sanctions (BDS) Workshop2:15-3:45pm Panels [A] [B] [C] [D] [E] [F ] [G] [H] 4:00-6:00pm Plenary7:30pm Social

SUNDAY MAY 11, 2014

10:30-12:00pm Tribute to Ali Mustafa12:15-1:45pm Panels [A] [B] [C] [D] [E] [F ] [G] [H] 1:45-2:15pm Lunch2:15-3:45pm Panels [A] [B] [C] [D] [E] [F ] [G] 4:00-6:00pm Closing Plenary

THURSDAY, MAY 8, 2014

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OPENING PLENARY:Left Praxis and the Co-Constitution

of Race, Class, and Gender

Thursday, May 8th 20145:00pm - 7:00pm

Himani BannerjiRuth Wilson Gilmore

Lise Vogel

OPENING RECEPTION7:30pm

CIBC Lobby, Accolade East Building

FRIDAY, MAY 9th 20149:30 – 11:00

<A> The Body in/and Social Reproduction

Alan SearsThe Social Reroduction of Queerness

Sue FergusonChildhood, the Body and the Psycho-social Reproduction of Capitalism

Chair: Cinzia Arruzza

 Primitive Accumulation in Canada

Sourayan MookerjeaMultitude, Subaltern and the Common, or, the Native Rights Based Strategic Framework of Class Politics?

Niloofar GolkarCritique of the Theory of Primitive Accumulation and the Situation of the Temporary Working Women in Ontario

A.T. KingsmithConceptualising Neo-Feudalism: Capitalism, Imperialism, and the Cycle of Primitive Accumulation in the 21st Century

Natalie KnightCanada’s First Tenants: Tracing the Development of First Nations “Tenancy” from Reserves to the Urban Core in British Columbia

Chair: Jessica Evans

<C> ‘Being’ in Capitalism

Noah GataveckasThe Spiritual Crisis of Marxism

Gabrielle GerinMarx’s ‘sensuousness’: A Soil for Communism

David JanzenCritical Limits: Notes Toward a Subtractive Ontology of Crisis

Borna RadnikAlienated Labour and Being-towards-death: Augmenting Marx’s Theory of Alienation

Chair: Mizhar Mikati

<D> Talking Turkey (Part 1): Accumulation and Dispossession: The State and Economy

Esin Candan and Mustafa KocNeo-liberal Restructuring of the Agri-Food System in Turkey (2002-2012)

Havva Ezgi Dogru“Benevolent Hand” of the Turkish State in the Construction Sector in Era of Austerity: Mass Housing Administration (TOKI)

Baris Karaagac and Fuat ErcanRethinking the Crisis of the Tax State (Schumpeter): Changing Relationships Between State and Capital in the wake of the Austerity Programs in Turkey

Chair: Yasin Kaya

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FRIDAY, MAY 9, 2014

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<E> Responding to Neoliberalism: The State and Socialist Strategizing

Thomas Chiasson-LebelSocial Classes, Neoliberalism and the Left Wing Government in Ecuador

Manuel LarrabureHuman Development and Class Struggle in Venezuela’s Popular Economy: The Paradox of ‘Twenty-First Century Socialism’

Frederick PetersPlumbing the Revolution: Neoliberal Urban Water Infrastructure Restructurings and Municipal “Socialist” Counter Strategies in the EU and Canada

Chair: Sonja Killoran-McKibbin

<F> Cultural Politics, Class, Hollywood and Crisis

Tanner Mirrlees Hollywood, the Financial Crisis and the End of the World

John McCullough Hollywood’s Class Terror: How and Why Movies and TV Represent Middle Classes

Scott Forsyth Culture and Party from Old to New Left in the Canadian 1960s

Chair: Scott Forsyth

<G> Youth and Capitalism

Ashley ChenPlacing Children in the Belly of Capitalism

Amelie DelageThe Institution of Childhood Reconsidered in the Movement of History

James AvisComfort Radicalism and NEETs: A Conservative Praxis

James CairnsEverything for Everybody: Entitlement and Popular Power

Chair: Parastou Saberi

<H> The Light Comes in From Under the Door: Technologies of Capital and Its Encouraging Gaps

AK ThompsonThe Work of Industrial Icons in the Age of Techno-Capitalism

Liam Mitchell and Kevin MitchellHigh-Frequency Trading, the Genuflecting Subject, and a Politico-Aesthetic Response to Austerity

Atle Mikkola KjosenBlinded With Logistics: Capitalist Circulation after Fordism

Mary Eileen Wennekers“Always Historicize!”: Valorization as a Socially Symbolic Act

Chair: TBA

 Dialectics of the Ideal: Evald Ilyenkov and Creative Soviet Marxism (Book Launch)

Alex Levant

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11:15 – 12:45

<A> Disciplining the Body: Forms of Domination and Liberation

Julian Ammirante The Use of Sport and Leisure Industries to Promote the ‘Healthy’ Body as a Positive Social Force

Faye GuentherWhat to Do with Freedom: Queer Space and Historical Materialism in the Writing of David Wojnarowicz

Ivan DruryProhibiting Sex Work to Assimilate Radical Ethnic-white Working Class Men

G.G. MacdonaldA Political Ecology of Human Vulnerability: Disability and the Natural Limits of Economy

Chair: Alan Sears

 Marxism and the National: On Nationalism, the ‘National Question’ and the ‘Southern Question’

Eric BlancAnti-Colonial Marxism: Oppression and Revolution in the Russian Borderlands

Tarique NiaziMarxism, Nationalism and Political Discourse: The Confluence of History and Geography in the Baloch Resistance Movement in Pakistan

Alireza SaghafyThe Class Struggle under the Current Global Situation in Iran

Araceli Hernandez-LarocheOn Southern Questions and Its Global Echoes


<C> Imagination and Collective Memory in and against Capitalism

Johannah May BlackReading Coal Miners’ Memoirs as a Challenge to Global Capitalism’s Grand Historical Narratives

Julian von BargenPost-Capitalist Imaginations: New Subjectivities in the Science Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson

Seon TyrellCapitalism and the Phantasmal: Political Economy of Death and Dying

Chair: Sue Ferguson

<D> Talking Turkey (Part II): Unfolding Contradictions: Crisis and Resistance

Umit AkcayGezi Resistance and the Limits of Authoritarian Neoliberalism in Turkey

Ali Behran OzcelikBringing Gramsci and Poulantzas Back in: Superstructural Roots of the Gezi Uprising

Mehmet Baki DenizAnalyzing The Recent Political Crisis in Turkey through Poulantzas’ Internationalization Thesis

Chair: Yasin Kaya

FRIDAY, MAY 9, 2014

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<E> Re-assessing Left Governments in Latin America

Kristin Ciupa The Political Economy of Venezuelan Oil and the Bolivarian Revolution

Jeffrey WebberManaging Bolivian Capitalism

Manuel Salamanca Cardona Conflicts Between Progressive Governments and Social Movements in the Global South: Natural Resources, Extractivism, and Territorial Control. The Case of the “TIPNIS National Park” in Bolivia


<F> Keywords for Radicals: Devising a Late-Capitalist Vocabulary of Culture and Society

Kelly Fritsch and AK ThompsonKeywords and Late Capitalism

Justin Podur “Oppression” as a Keyword

Natalie Kouri-Towe “Queer” as a Keyword

Punam Kholsa “Space” as a Keyword

Himani Bannerji “Ideology” as a Keyword

Chair: TBA

<G> Marx on the Relation of “the Integral Development of Every Individual Producer” to the Practicability of Socialism

Edward WinslowMarx on Despotism

Chris AraujoThe “Dualism” of the Russian Commune: Comparing the Revolutionary Subjectivity of the Obshchina with Other Precapitalist Formations

Chris MatrocolaMarx on the Difference Between “the mere critical analysis of actual facts” and “writing receipts ... for the cook-shops of the future”

Paul EliasMarx on Revolutionary Subjectivity and its Development

Chair: Edward Winslow

<H> The Future of Food

Alfredo MazzamauroThe Making of the Modern Food Crises: the Introduction of the Grain Futures Market in London, 1880s-1890s

Mizhar MikatiThe Theory of Need and Food

Ritika ShrimaliFood Sovereignty Praxis in an Era of Corporate Control?: The Case of the Capitalist State and Contract Farming in India

Stephen GrayThe Coming Oil Austerity and the Communist Future

Chair: Chris Webb

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 Resolving Contradiction: Developing a Left Praxis from the Corpse of Conflict Resolution

Sarah Rose-JensenLet Our Revolution Begin in Our Art: Altermodernity and Critical Conflict Theory

Alaa Kamel Arab Socialism Now?

James Filipi Art and the City after Industrialization: The Practice of Resistance

Chair: Sarah Rose-Jensen

Lunch: 12:45 – 2:00

2:00 – 3:30

<A> Social Reproduction Beyond the Household

Nicole LeachSocial Reproduction Feminism and Transitions to Capitalism

Rebecca HallExpanding the Scope of Production in an Analysis of Ongoing ‘Primitive’ Accumulation in the Northwest Territories

Chair: Nausheen Quayyum

 Marxian Interventions in Theorizing Inter-State Relations

Paul KelloggUnequal Geographies of Power – Canada, the U.S., Mexico, and the Misuse of World Systems Theory

Kailash SrinivasanCity, Surplus Populations and War in the Age of Neoliberalism

Chandra KumarPolitical Realism, Marxism, and the Pursuit of Global Justice


<C> Neoclassical Economics and the Social Forms it Obscures

Kyle Bailey Eurodollars and Hegemony: The Financialization of the US State after World War II

Dennis Badeen and Patrick Murray A Marxian Critique of Neoclassical Economics’ Reliance on Shadows of Capital’s Constitutive Social Forms

Chair: Hannes Lacher

<D> Organizing Gezi: Class Strategy in Turkey’s 2013 Protests

Elif GencOccupy Gezi and ‘The Peace Process’

Gamze EvcimenReligion, Neoliberal Hegemony, and Resistance in the Global South

FRIDAY, MAY 9, 2014

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Siyaves AzeriThe Gezi Uprising: The Self-movement of Class Struggle and Representation Crisis of the “Radical Left”

Chair: TBA

<E> Mobilizing in Brazil: 2013

Sabrina FernandesA Crisis of Praxis: Exploring Alignments and Misalignments in the Relationship between Organized Political Movements and the Masses in Brazil

Manuel LarrabureCreating the New Commons in the 2013 Brazilian Uprisings

Jessica SoesterParticipatory Freedom and the Right to the City: A Marxian Approach to the Concept of “Freedom”

Chair: Stefan Kipfer

<F> Aesthetics, Culture, and the Frankfurt School

Thomas LaughlinCrisis and Clarity: Fredric Jameson’s The Antinomies of Realism and the Problem of Representing Totality Today

Devin Lefebvre A Reconfigured Aesthetics Scene: The Material and the Sensible In Rancière’s Political-Aesthetics

Jordy CummingsForces of Chaos and Anarchy: Popular Music, the New Left and Social Movements, 1966-1972

Chair: Graeme Reniers

<G> Neo-liberalism and Queers: A Dialogue on Queers, History, Class, Race and Praxis for Today

Gary Kinsman Queer Activism in the 1970s: From Liberation to Rights as a Shift Towards Neo-liberalism

Tim McCaskell Gay Liberation and the Overdetermination of Homonationalism

Chair: Gary Kinsman

<H> Food, Fuel and the Fight for Fertility

Samuel WalkerIntersectional Class Formation and the Alternative Food Movement

Terran GiacominiFight for Fertility: Exploring the Connections between Seed Freedom Movements and Corporate Concentration in the Agri-food Sector

Leigh BrownhillThe New Indirect Rule and the Commoners’ Alliance: Gendered Terrains of Struggle in East Africa and the World

Terisa TurnerRevolutionary Eco-Feminism: Commoners Alliances in the Energy Sector

Chair: Terran Giacomini

HM TORONTO 2014

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 Class Formation, State Formation, and Subjectivity

Richard SeymourAusterity and the Left’s Crisis

Jonah BirchWhat Does It Mean to Call Neoliberalism a Class Project?

Timothy ClarkChile’s ‘Great Transformation’: State and Class under Pinochet and Beyond

Chair: Salmaan Khan

3:45 – 5:15

<A> The Cost of Social Reproduction is too Damn High: Working Women and ‘Women’s Work’ in Industry, the Family and the State

Kate Griffiths DinganiSocial Reproduction, the State and Health Care Reform

Erin ChunCrisis, Austerity and the Restructuring of Social Reproduction

Chair: Donya Ziaee

 The Canadian State in the International Domain

Justin Panos and Anthony FentonThe Caliphate and the Crown: Understanding how the Canada-GCC Axis is Shaping Capitalism and War in the Middle East

Hadrian Mertins-KirkwoodUnmasking the Trans-Pacific Partnership: A Critical Canadian Perspective

Naomi CalnitskyRereading Inter-Colonial Trade and Slavery in the 18th Century French Atlantic: A Spatio-Economic Approach

Paul EmijanowiczBureaucratization and Depoliticization in Northern-Ghana: Rethinking Canadian Development Aid

Chair: Rebecca Hall

<C> The Production of Urban Space: Domination, Exploitation, and the Right to the City

Keeanga-Yamahtta TaylorRace in the City: The Political Economy of Colorblindness and Urban Restructuring

Ayesha BasitToward Epistemologies of Urban Security

Marie-Ève Desroches Seeking Women’s Right to the City: the Influence of Patriarchy and Capitalism in the Building of Socio-spatial Injustices

Frédérique Roy Trempe Women’s Right to the City and Urban Design


<D> Reflections on the Gezi Uprising: Commoning and Social Space

Ali Yalcin GöymenProjecting the Common as the Social and Political Basis of Realizing the Idea of Communism

FRIDAY, MAY 9, 2014

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Jessica Elaine ReillyCapital Cities: The Production of the Urban Proletariat and the Dispossession of Social Space

David M. BellCommoning, Enclosure and Creativity: A History of Nottingham’s ‘Island’, 1845-2045

Chair: TBA

<E> Thomas Miller Klubock’s La Frontera: Forests and Ecological Conflict in Chile’s Frontier Territory (Roundtable)

Thomas Miller Klubock Carlota McAllisterJeff Webber

Chair: Colin Mooers

<F> Revisiting Marxian Conceptions of Subjectivity, Class, and Labour

Geoff PfeiferMood Economies, Marxism, and Psychoanalysis; Or on the Contemporary Importance of the Lacanian Left

Scott RitnerThe Afflicted Class: Simone Weil and Walter Benjamin, on the History of the Oppressed

Robert Froese“In the beginning was the Deed”: Marx, Levinas and the Haunted Subject


<G> Time, Economic Development and Political Upheaval: Exploring Social Property Relations and Historical Processes in Context

Frantz Gheller Early Modern Agrarian Change in the St. Lawrence Valley: A Dual Path of Development?

Jonathan Martineau Historicizing Capitalist Time. Clock-time and the Making of World Standard Time

Jonathan Viger Rural Migrants and Poor People’s Movements in Revolutionary Context: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution


<H> Dispossession, Socialism, and Struggle in India

Anisha Datta‘Teaching’ Socialism to Women

Janam Mukherjee The Communist Party in Bengal during Famine

Mustafa Uruyar State-Sponsored Accumulation by Dispossession in India’s Narmada Valley

Chair: Nausheen Quayyum

HM TORONTO 2014

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FRIDAY PLENARYConfronting Austerity:

Challenges For Left Praxis

5:30pm – 7:30pm

Tithi BhattacharyaRichard SeymourPanagiotis Sotiris

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17

SATURDAY, MAY 10, 2014

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SATURDAY, MAY 10th 20149:30 – 11:00

<A> Roundtable: Fanon’s Dialectics of Experience (Part 1)

David McNallyGillian HartHimani BannerjiMazibuko JaraPablo IdahosaAto Sekyi-Otu

Chair: Rebecca Hall

 Yesterday’s Theory, Today: Rereading Marxist Texts Politically

Juho KorhonenRereading the Systems Thinkers of Early Soviet Union and their Relation to Structures of Power

Omer MoussalyReading Gramsci Politically

Panagiotis Sotiris Philosophy as Theoretical Laboratory: Gramsci and Althusser on Philosophy


<C> Centenary Reflections on World War I: Dimensions of Revolution (Part 1)

Lars LihThe Basel Resolution and the Bolsheviks

Paul KelloggFor Unity Against War and Capitalism – the Half-Remembered Contribution of Leon Trotsky, 1914-1917

Darya DyakonovaThe Youngest Against the War: Anti-Militarist and Anti-War Activities of the Young Communist League and the Young Pioneers of Canada in the 1920s

Chair: Dhruv Jain

<D> Class, Nation and State in the Neoliberal Context: Perspectives on Québec and Canada

Éric Pineault, Julia Posca amd Audrey Laurin-LamotheMoving Beyond Discourses of Inequality, Theorizing Class Struggle in Financialized Capitalism and Late Neoliberalism in Québec and Canada

FG DufourThe Shifting Basis of Nationalism in Québec 1970-2013. The (re)Making of the Neoconservative Nationalist Class

Mathieu JeanThe 2012 Quebec Student’s Movement in the Nationalist Political Thought: When Nation Hijacks Political Subjectivity


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<E> Political Economy of Iran: Labour, Gender and National Minorities

Saeed RahnemaLabour Organizing in Iran

Amir Hassanpour National and Ethnic Contradictions in Iran

Mehrdad VahabiThe Political Economy of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Roja GhahariWomen Under the Iranian Welfare System: Charity and Control

Chair: Roja Ghahari

<F> David Craven’s Case Against ‘Capitalist Art’: Labour, the Work of Art and Autogestion

Luiz Renato Martins Art History as Insurgency

Brian Winkenweder Complaints of an Art Historian: Craven’s Critique of Greenberg or ‘the Insipid Empiricism of Positivism’

Chair: TBA

<G> Labour Power and the Figure of the Proletariat

Gavin WalkerThe Philosophy of Labour Power: The Lazarus-Layers and Primitive Accumulation

William Clare Roberts“Workmen, beggars, thieves, and prostitutes”: Labour-power and Figures of the Proletariat in Marx’s Context

Ken KawashimaSurplus Population and the Figure of Lazarus

Chair: Charles Post

<H> Parties and Democracy in Theory and Practice

Michael RomandelMaoism, the Urban Revolution and the Spatial Contradictions of Toronto

Paul RaekstadMarx and Revolutionary Praxis

Adam HiltonThe Democratic Insurgency: The New Left, the Democrats, and the Crisis of 1968

Donald KingsburyPopulism as Post-Politics? Towards a Critique of Radical Democracy

Chair: TBA


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11:15 – 12:45

<A> Roundtable: Fanon’s Dialectics Experience (Part 2)

David McNallyGillian HartHimani BannerjiMazibuko JaraPablo IdahosaAto Sekyi-Otu

Chair: Colin Mooers

 A Marxist look at Ethical Practice and Liberal ‘Secularism’

Paul GrayOne More Time With Feeling: Marx’s Theory of Justice

Lee KuhnleThe Dialectic of Belief and the (Bourgeois) Myth of Secularism

Shokoufeh SakhiMarx’s All-rounded Individual and the Praxis of Resistance in a Globalizing Human Condition

Chair: Tom Cheney

<C> Centenary Reflections on World War I: Dimensions of Revolution (Part 2)

Dhruv JainObscure Origins: The Influence of World War 1 and the Russian Revolution on Indian Communism

Abigail BakanReading Clara Zetkin, 1914-2014: War, Feminism, and Identity

John RiddellResponding to Capitalist Disaster: World War (1914) and Climate Crisis (2014)

Chair: Darya Dyakonova

<D> Progressive Politics and Modalities of Co-option

Justin PodurThe Professionalization of Leftism: A Potential Weakness in Movement Building

Kamilla PietrzykStrategic Planning in the “Empire of Speed”: Social Movements Confront the Future

Matthew MorganWhistleblowers, Social Media, and the American Security Establishment: The Case of Edward Snowden

Theresa EnrightMass Urban Transit in the 21st Century: The Dialectics of Metromobility

Chair: TBA

<E> Class Struggle, Neoliberalism and Politics in Pakistan

Ayyaz MallickBetween Coercion and Patronage: Neoliberal Urbanism and Working-Class Politics in Urban Pakistan

Shozab RazaClass and Moral Economies under Neoliberal Globalization: A Peasant Confrontation with the State in Pakistani Punjab

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Noaman G. AliClass Struggle in Between “Political Society” and “Civil Society”: Peasants, Land and Democracy in Northwestern Pakistan

Chair: Stefan Kipfer

<F> “On s’en câlisse”: A Profane Story of the Quebec strike - Spring 2012 (Roundtable)

Gabrielle GérinPhilippe BlouinNadia Koromyslova

Chair: Gabrielle Gérin

<G> Analyzing Precarious Workers and Informal Work

Jason Michael Webb Revisiting the Lumpenproletariat: A Historical Materialist Approach to Contemporary Homelessness and Marginality

Kristen Tran The Political Economy of Domestic Substitutes: a Critical Assessment of Contemporary Transfer of Paid Reproductive Labour at the Intersection of Gender, Race, and Class

Jacqueline HayesWagelessness and Deportation: How the Threat of Immigration Enforcement and Job Loss Impact Working Conditions for Latino Immigrant Workers

Chair: Chris Bailey

<H> Strategies of Resistance

Michael BueckertHorizontal and Vertical Solidarities: Occupy Wall Street and Responsibility to the Other(s)

Kelly FlinnGetting Creative with Class: An Examination of Cultural Labour in Contemporary Capitalism

Irina CericLawyering in Mass Movements: Law, Organizing, and the Promise of Praxis

Adam LewisForegrounding Anarcha-Indigenism: Renewing Anti-Colonial and Decolonizing Commitments in Anarchism and Beyond

Chair: Jordan House

Lunch: 12:45 – 2:15

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Workshop

Bill V. Mullen, Iymen Chehade, Rima Kapitan, Shehal Shingavi

SATURDAY MAY 10, 2014

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2:15 – 3:45

<A> The (Anti)Colonial Questions of Our Times: Epistemology, Temporality and Violence in the (Un)Making of Colonial Modernity

Zubairu WaiRecolonizing Africa: Violence, Liberal Interventionism and the Challenge of the Colonial Library

Zahir KoliaColonial Modern Time(s): The Universalization of Empty Homogeneous Time and the Denial of Enchanted Life-Worlds

Bikrum GillCan the River Speak? Epistemological Confrontation in the Rise and Fall of the Land Grab

Chair: Salmaan Khan

 Italian Marxist Theory: Rethinking the Past and Present of Theory and Practice

Elise ThorburnClass Composition and the Minor Current of Autonomy: Organisation in Left Practice Past and Present

Guio JacintoThe (un)known Tronti

Paul McFaddenAlienation and the Anticapitalist Politics of General Intellect

Chair: David McNally

<C> Theorizing Conflict: On Imperial Power, its Legitimizations and Resistance

Daniel EganA Critical Perspective on Gramsci’s Military Metaphor: Lessons for Theory and Practice

Diana O’Dwyer Banning Landmines and Cluster Munitions: A Gramscian Analysis of the Role of ‘International Civil Society’ in Legitimizing Western Military Power

Ryan ToewsReading US Imperialism through Counterinsurgency Doctrine

Chair: TBA

<D> Etat, marchandisation et resistance face au capitalisme avance

Laurent AlarieLe néolibéralisme: entre résistance et acceleration

Nichola Gendreau-RicherCritique de l’université, à l’ère du capitalisme avancé

Alexandre Le BlancBilderberg, lieu de rencontre d’une bourgeoisie transnationale

Omer MoussalyMarxisme et anarchisme: sources d’inspiration pour les insatisfaits du capitalisme au 21e siècle

Chair: Omer Moussaly

HM TORONTO 2014

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<E> Labour and Core-Periphery Relations

Raju Das Imperialism, the Global Reserve Army, and the Subsumption of Labour

Toby MoorsomMonopoly Capital, Small-Holders and the Contested ‘Green Revolutions’ in the Global South


<F> Building a Left-Wing Student Movement in the Face of Austerity

Jeanne Reynolds ASSÉ and Austerity: Lessons from a Radical Student Organization

Katherine Ruault Student Movement as a Basis for our Struggles: Feminist Perspectives and Limits

Doug Nesbitt “I wouldn’t tolerate the neanderthal priorities of the average student council” Revisiting the English Canadian Campus Radicalism of the Late 1960s

Ashleigh Ingle This Status Quo Won’t Change Itself: A Call Against Parasitism and Inaction

Chair: Hugo Bonin

<G> Interrogating Methodologies, Questioning Concepts

Michelle MawhinneyIdentity, Subjectivity and Embodied Materialism

Megan BehrentThe Personal and Political: Marxism, Feminism and Literature

Paul HeidemanTheories of Racial Capital: A Critique

Donya ZiaeeComplicating ‘Intersectionality’: The Possibilities and Challenges of Materialist Feminisms

Chair: Nicole Leach

<H> On Subjectivity and Self-Emancipation

Graeme ReniersOn the Semicentennial of Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man: Searching for Subjectivity

Sean SarakaPossessive Individualism Reconsidered: Property, Subjectivity, and Representation in Contemporary Political Thought

Alex LevantActivity and Revolution: ‘Human Beings Produce through Their Own Labour, a Reality Which Increasingly Enslaves Them’. Why? And How Do We Stop?

Chair: Rodney Doody


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SATURDAY PLENARYImperialism, Indigenous Politics

& Anti-Colonial Struggles

4pm – 6pm

David AustinPeter Kulchyski

Judith Whitehead

SOCIAL (OFF-CAMPUS)

7:30 pm

The Foxes Den Bar & Grill 1075 Bay Street (South of Bloor)

This location is fully wheel-chair accessible

HM TORONTO 2014

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SUNDAY, MAY 11th 201410:30 – 12:00

TRIBUTE TO ALI MUSTAFA:What Happened to Syria’s Popular Revolution?

Gilbert AchcarThe Syrian Uprising & War as Part of the Regional Revolutionary Dynamics

Yasser MunifGrassroots Organizing Inside Syria

Senay OzdenSyrian (Non)Refugees in Turkey & the Politics of Aid

Jamie AllinsonSyria and the Western Left

Chair: Donya Ziaee

12:15 – 1:45

<A> South Africa: The Present as History, From Mrs. Ples to Mandela and Marikana & A Flawed Freedom: Rethinking Southern African Liberation (Book Launch)

John S. Saul

Chair: Chris Webb

 Autonomist Left, Feminist and Work Place Organizing in the 1970s: Suggestions for Current Praxis

Gary KinsmanActivist Autonomist Marxism in 1970s ‘Canada’

Christina Rousseau1970s Marxist-Feminist Organizing: Linking Theory and Practice

John Huot“Workers Autonomy” and Workplace Organizing in Ontario in the 1970s

Chair: Nicole Leach

<C> Explaining the Decline of Organized Labour in the US: Is “Globalization” to Blame?

Charles Post The Decline of the Industrial Unionism in the North American Tire Industry since 1975

Nicole Aschoff The Roots of the Decline of the United Auto Workers in the North American Auto Industry

Discussant: Michael Goldfield

Chair: Todd Gordon

SUNDAY, MAY 11, 2014

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<D> Conceptualizing Violence: Discussions on Epistemological, Subjective, and Political Violence

Robert WoodFederici’s Misreading of Foucault’s History of Sexuality Vol. 1 and its Significance

Ashley BohrerSexual Violence and the Force of the Objective

Tammy Kovich The Stories We Tell: Women, Violence and the Subversion of Gender

Chair: Rebecca Hall

<E> Organizing Resistance Against Neoliberal Destruction

Robert Neubauer and Kathleen Raso Growing Organic: Pipeline Politics, Organic Intellectuals, and the Organized Right in Canada

Julie TomiakNavigating the Contradictions of the Shadow State: Indigenous Political Organizations, Resistance, and De/politicization

Trish KahleThe Graveyard Shift: Workplace Safety, Ecological Consciousness, and the Rise and Fall of Miners for Democracy

Stephen D’Arcy Secondary Targeting: A Strategic Approach to Tar Sands Resistance


<F> The Politics of Solidarity – Performance, Autonomy & Digital Media

Paige SarlinNow: Solidarity and Real Time Images of Struggle

Lindsay Gross Performing Solidarity

Katja Praznik The Autonomy of Artistic Labour and the Obfuscation of Class Relations: The Slovenian Cultural System from the 1980s to the Present

Chair: Rob Heynen

<G> Art and Education: Fields of Struggle Against Capital

Bozhin Traykov“In Pace with the Times” Alyosha vs. Superman: Understanding Cultural Hegemony and War of Position in Bulgaria

Carolyn ElerdingRents and Realization in the “Leveraged” Classroom

Natalia de la RosaDiego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros: Notes on the Development of the Plastic Production “Workshop”

Chair: Salmaan Khan

HM TORONTO 2014

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<H> Workers’ Organizations and Labour Struggles: Lessons for the Current Conjuncture

Chris HurlClass Struggle, State Formation and the Making of Ontario’s Public Sector

Nicole Cohen and Greig de PeuterCultural Workers Organize: Rethinking Cultural Labour from Below

Jordan HouseIncarceration and Emancipation: Prisoners’ Rights, Citizenship, Labour and Struggle in Canada

Mritiunjoy MohantyNew trends in Unionisation and Organising in India

Chair: Chris Bailey

Lunch: 1:45 – 2:15

2:15 – 3:45

<A> The Cost of Crisis: The Politics of Social Reproduction in South Africa

Christopher WebbAgrarian Change, Social Reproduction and the Western Cape Farm Worker Strikes

Zachary LevensonThe Parallax of Delivery: The Case of Housing Delivery in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Kate Doyle Griffiths-DinganiDenialism Defeated: Delivery and Disruption in South Africa’s Health Care Sector

Chair: Alan Sears

 Class Formation, State Formation and the Transitions to Modernity

Jessica Evans Migration, Class Formation and Capitalist Development in the Settler Colonies

Jordy Cummings and George Cominel A Terrifying Parasitic Body: Politically-constituted Property and the Class-like State in France

Michael Andrew Zmolek, The Active State: Reformers, Policing, Abolition, Factories and the New Poor Law in the UK - 1829-1834


<C> Feminism, Ecology, and Embeddedness

Nikeeta Slade Marxist Black Feminist Analysis of Black Women’s Sexuality in the Neoliberal Period

Niko BlockEcofeminism and the Reproductive Strike: From Nuclear to Climate Change

Niang NafiTerritorializing the Knowledge Economy in the West?

Colin CampbellEquality and Ecology: Beyond Identitarian Political Economy

Chair: Michelle Mawhinney

SUNDAY, MAY 11, 2014

28

<D> Extraction, Imperialism and Internal Colonialism: Mining and Canadian Imperialism at Home and Abroad

Warren BernauerUranium Exploration, Caribou Management and Internal Colonialism in Nunavut

Tyler ShipleyDispossession in San José: A Concrete Analysis of Land Seizure by Canadian Mining Companies in Honduras

Caren Weisbart Justifying Violence? An Intersectional Analysis of Power at a Canadian Mine Site in Guatemala and its Implications for Transnational Advocacy

Chair: Anna Zalik

<E> Crisis and Contingencies of Class Struggle: Internationalization of Arab Revolutions in Syria, Turkey and Iran

Nima NakhaeiIran, International Trenches and the Internalization of the Syrian Crisis

Ali Behran Ozcelik The Turkish Summer after the Arab Spring: Poulantzasian Themes for Understanding the Regional Dimensions of Turkey’s “Political Crisis”

Hessam DaryaniHalting the Revolutions in the Arab Middle East: Imperialist Models for Intervening in Syria

Chair: Justin Panos

<F> Education and Class under Neoliberalism

Ariane FischerEducation, Subjectivity, and Austerity Capitalism

Nina Eichacker and Orsola CostantiniNeoliberalism, Privatization, and Austerity: Implications for the Production of Knowledge

Tahir ButtHigher Education Tuition Before Neoliberalism

Lee SustarThe Chicago Teachers Union Strike of 2012

Chair: Chris Bailey

<G> Reasoning with Rationality: Critical Approaches to Answering Questions

Christian LotzSociety Does Not Exist? A Critique of Neo-Idealisms in Recent Post-Marxism

Stephen MaherBuilding Historical Materialism: Approaches to Marx’s Capital and the Role of Theory in Historical Investigation

John LundyPractical Reason and the Normative Foundations of Critical Social Theory

Marcelo HoffmanInvestigations from Marx to Foucault


HM TORONTO 2014

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SUNDAY CLOSING PLENARY Critical Ecologies, Agrarian Change

& Rural Resistance

4:00pm – 6:00pm

Haroon Akram-LodhiFarshad AraghiJason W. Moore

THANK YOU

Sponsors:

Department of Geography, York UniversityDepartment of Political Science, York UniversityFounders College, York University

Organizing Committee:

Christopher Bailey, Raju Das, Jessica Evans, Arash Falasiri, Sue Ferguson, Todd Gordon, Rebecca Hall, Rob Heynen, Salmaan Khan, Sonja Killoran-McKibbin, Stefan Kipfer, Nicole Leach, David McNally, Mizhar Mikati, Colon Mooers, Nausheen Quayyum, Graeme Reniers, Parastou Saberi, Alan Sears, Christopher Webb, Donya Ziaee.

Cover & Gatefold Photograph:

Ali Mustafa

Poster & Program Design:

Ryan Hayes

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FRIDAY, MAY 9, 2014

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Documents

Historical Materialism Toronto 2014 Conference Program