Perry Anderson

For the Canadian ice hockey player, see Perry Anderson(ice hockey).Perry R. Anderson (born September 1938, London)[1]

Perry Anderson at the Holberg Prize Symposium, Bergen, Nor-way, 25 November 2008

is a British historian and political essayist. A specialist inintellectual history, he is often identified with the post-1956 Western Marxism of the New Left. He is Professorof History and Sociology at the University of California,Los Angeles (UCLA) and a former editor of theNew LeftReview. Anderson has written several books, the latestbeing The Indian Ideology (2012), a polemic against theIndian nation-building project. He is the brother of polit-ical scientist Benedict Anderson.

1 Background and early life

Anderson was born in 1938. His father, James CarewO'Gorman Anderson (1893–1946), known as Shaemas,an official with the Chinese Maritime Customs, was borninto an Anglo-Irish family, the younger son of Brigadier-General Sir Francis Anderson, of Ballydavid, CountyWaterford.[2] He was descended from the Anderson fam-ily of Ardbrake, Bothriphnie, Scotland, who had settledin Ireland in the early 18th century.[3][4][5] His mother,Veronica Beatrice Mary Anderson, was English.[6] Hisgrandmother, Frances, Lady Anderson, belonged to theGaelic Gorman clan of County Clare and was the daugh-ter of the Irish Home Rule Member of Parliament Ma-jor Purcell O'Gorman,[7][8][9] himself the son of NicholasPurcell O'Gorman who had been involved with theRepublican Society of United Irishmen during the 1798Rebellion, later becoming Secretary of the Catholic As-sociation in the 1820s.[7][10][11] Anderson’s father had

previously beenmarried to the novelist Stella Benson, andit was after her death in 1933 that he married again.[3]

Anderson was educated at Eton and Worcester College,Oxford, where he took his first degree.[1]

2 Career

In 1962 Anderson became editor of the New Left Review,a position he held for twenty years.[12] As scholars of theNew Left began to reassess their canon in the mid-1970s,Anderson provided an influential perspective.[12] He pub-lished two major volumes of analytical history in 1974:Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism focuses on the cre-ation and endurance of feudal social formations, whileLineages of the Absolutist State examines monarchical ab-solutism. Within their respective topics they are each vastin scope, assessing the whole history of Europe from clas-sical times to the nineteenth century. The books achievedan instant prominence for Anderson, whose wide-ranginganalysis synthesised elements of history, philosophy, andpolitical theory.[12]

In the 1980s he took office as a professor at the NewSchool for Social Research in New York.[12] He returnedas editor at NLR in 2000 for three more years, and afterhis retirement continued to serve on the journal’s editorialcommittee. He still writes, including frequent contribu-tions to the London Review of Books,[13] and continues toteach as a Distinguished Professor of History and Sociol-ogy at the University of California, Los Angeles.[14]

3 Influence and criticism

He bore the brunt of the disapproval of E. P. Thompsonin the latter’s The Poverty of Theory, in a controversy dur-ing the late 1970s over the structural Marxism of LouisAlthusser, and the use of history and theory in the politicsof the Left. In the mid-1960s, Thompson wrote an essayfor the annual Socialist Register that rejected Anderson’sview of aristocratic dominance of Britain’s historical tra-jectory, as well as Anderson’s seeming preference forcontinental European theorists over radical British tradi-tions and empiricism. Anderson delivered two responsesto Thompson’s polemics, first in an essay in New LeftReview (January–February 1966) called “Socialism andPseudo-Empiricism” and then in a more conciliatory yetambitious overview, Arguments within English Marxism

1

2 7 EXTERNAL LINKS

(1980).While Anderson has faced many attacks in his nativeBritain for favouring continental European philosophersover British thinkers, he has not spared Western Euro-pean Marxists from criticism; see his Considerations onWestern Marxism (1976). Nevertheless, many of his as-saults have been delivered against postmodernist currentsin continental Europe. In the Tracks of Historical Materi-alism Anderson regards Paris as the new capital of intel-lectual reaction, quite at odds with others who treat post-modernism as a left heresy.

4 Works

Anderson is the author of numerous books, including:

• Passages From Antiquity to Feudalism (1974). Lon-don: New Left Books. ISBN 090230870X.

• Lineages of the Absolutist State (1974). London:New Left Books. ISBN 0902308165.

• Considerations on Western Marxism (1976).

• Arguments within English Marxism (1980). London:Verso. ISBN 0860917274.

• In the Tracks of Historical Materialism (1983). Lon-don: Verso. ISBN 0860910768.

• English Questions (1992). London: Verso. ISBN0860913759.

• A Zone of Engagement (1992). London: Verso.ISBN 0860913775.

• The Origins of Postmodernity (1998). London:Verso. ISBN 1859842224.

• Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas(2005). London: Verso. ISBN 1859845274.

• The New Old World (2009). London: Verso. ISBN9781844673124.

• The Indian Ideology (2012). New Delhi: Three Es-says Collective. ISBN 9788188789924.

• American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers (2015).London: Verso.

5 References[1] Gregory Elliott (1998), Perry Anderson: The Merciless

Laboratory of History, University of Minnesota Press, p.1.

[2] Sir Bernard Burke, Peter Townsend, Burke’s Genealogicaland Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry (1969), p. 41

[3] Perry Anderson, A Belated Encounter (Anderson’s shortbiography of his father James)

[4] “Journal of the Old Waterford Society 1994” (PDF). P. 7,para. 9.

[5] Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentryof Ireland.

[6] “The Influence of Benedict Anderson”.</

[7] James Frost, “The History and Topography of the Countyof Clare - Pedigree of MacGorman (O’Gorman)", ClareCounty Library.

[8] “The History and Topography of the County of Clare –Ui Bracain...”, Clare County Library.

[9] “John O'Hart, Irish Pedigree’s, or, The Origin and Stemof the Irish Nation”.

[10] “The United Irishmen, their lives and times"/

[11] Kieran Sheedy, “The United Irishmen of County Clare”,County Clare - Historical Essays.

[12] Parker, David (1988). Cannon, John, ed. The BlackwellDictionary of Historians. Oxford; NewYork: Basil Black-well Ltd. pp. 8–9. ISBN 063114708X.

[13] London Review of Books (2012). “Perry Anderson in theLRB Archive”. Lrb.co.uk. LRB Ltd. Retrieved 29 May2012.

[14] UCLA Department of History (2012). “Perry R. Ander-son, UCLA Faculty”. History.ucla.edu. UCLA. Retrieved29 May 2012.

6 Further reading• Paul Blackledge, Perry Anderson, Marxism, and theNew Left. Merlin Press, 2004. ISBN 978-0-85036-532-0.

• Gregory Elliott, Perry Anderson: TheMerciless Lab-oratory of History. University of Minnesota Press,1998. ISBN 978-0-8166-2966-4.

7 External links• Archive of Perry Anderson’s articles for The Nation

• Archive of Perry Anderson’s articles for The NewLeft Review

• The New Statesman Profile – Perry Anderson

• Television interview on “Conversations with His-tory,” 2001 on YouTube

• “Gandhi Centre Stage” from the London Review ofBooks, 2012-07-05

3

8 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

8.1 Text• Perry Anderson Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry%20Anderson?oldid=655424278 Contributors: Bryan Derksen, CharlesMatthews, Huangdi, Matt91486, Klemen Kocjancic, Mike Rosoft, D6, Bender235, Zantastik, Vanky, G.W., KYPark, FutureNJGov,Hanshans23, FlaBot, Eubot, Chobot, Jersey Devil, YurikBot, Light current, Vino s, Sam Diener, Thirdcamper, Mgasner~enwiki, Blue-bot, Chlewbot, Rrburke, Cordless Larry, Evenfiel, Ohconfucius, Robofish, SMasters, Interlingua, Christian Roess, Nunquam Dormio,Trasel, 79spirit, RobotG, Hgav, Bigtimepeace, Purslane, Histomatist, Retinalsummer, DASonnenfeld, Kyle the bot, SteveStrummer, Cum-mings01, BOTijo, Flyer22, Oxymoron83, Smilo Don, ClueBot, Indopug, Addbot, SpBot, Lightbot, Алый Король, Luckas-bot, Yobot, Jesi,G0700596, LilHelpa, Omnipaedista, Dennis J au, Moonraker, RjwilmsiBot, Proscribe, Helpful Pixie Bot, PhnomPencil, MrNiceGuy1113,Redblackwritings, Absofort, Panevino1, Devereux1978, Hurvashtahumvata888 and Anonymous: 41

8.2 Images• File:Perry_Anderson.jpg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Perry_Anderson.jpg License: CC BY 2.0 Con-tributors: Flickr: HOLBERG PRISEN Original artist: Tor Erik H. Mathiesen

8.3 Content license• Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0