CfP: Workshop on the German Revolution and the Radical Democratic Imaginary

Call for Papers: Workshop on the German Revolution and the Radical Democratic
Imaginary

The University of Exeter, 24 May 2018

In the wake of the First World War, workers and soldiers across Europe
organised into democratic councils in order to challenge existing social
hierarchies and strive towards self-government and workers’ control over
production. During the 1918 German Revolution, a number of institutions and
practices were proposed from within the German council movements to create a
more participatory, democratic and worker-controlled society. Although there
was much disagreement over specific proposals, council delegates were
strongly in favour of deepening and extending existing forms of democracy
beyond the limits of the bourgeois liberal state. Yet a hundred years on and
political theory has drawn little from the discourses and practices of this
significant historical era. Our aim with this workshop is to rejuvenate
interest in political theorists and actors of the German Revolution and to
place them in dialogue with conversations in radical democratic theory. We
pose the question of how these political experiences should be theorised and
what significance they hold for political practices today.

The workshop will be an opportunity for scholars from a variety of
disciplines to form ongoing research networks based on shared areas of
interest. Through the workshop, we will organise a number of research groups
in which scholars will be asked to pre-circulate papers and provide feedback
to another member of their group. The idea of the conference is to cultivate
a space for in-depth discussion and collaborative research. We are open to
scholars engaging with the German Revolution from a variety of perspectives
including council communism, libertarian socialism, anarcho-syndicalism and
radical democracy, among others. Papers could also contribute to broader
debates in political theory on questions of democracy, agency, representation
and power. We welcome papers from both a theoretical and historical
perspective and anticipate the conference to spark discussion between
political theorists and historians.

A limited number of bursaries will be available for postgraduate students to
cover transportation costs. Please include a request with your abstract if
you are a postgraduate student who would like to apply for such a bursary.

Deadline for submission of abstracts for conference papers (up to 300 words):
5PM, 26 January 2018. Send abstracts to j.muldoon@exeter.ac.uk

Workshop Date: 9:30AM - 6:00PM, 24 May 2018.

Workshop website: germanrev2018.wordpress.com

Organised by James Muldoon and Martin Moorby, University of Exeter