This event has now been postponed to June 2021 as a result of Covid-19.
Call for Papers – Engels in Eastbourne
Call for Papers – Engels in Eastbourne
Conference to be held to mark Engels@200 at the University of Brighton, Eastbourne campus
Keynote
speakers:
Tariq Ali, writer and
filmmaker
Terrell Carver, Professor
of Political Theory at the University of Bristol
28 November 2020 marks the bicentenary of the
birth of Friedrich Engels, the German radical philosopher who in works such as The Condition of the Working Class in
England (1844), The Peasant War in Germany (1850), The Housing
Question (1872), ‘The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from
Ape to Man’ (1876), Anti-Dühring (1877), Socialism: Utopian and
Scientific (1880), Dialectics of Nature (1883) and The
Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) made
pathbreaking and profound contributions to modern social and political
theory. As the co-thinker of Karl Marx
and co-author of The Communist Manifesto
and ‘The German Ideology’, he played a critical role in the forging and
development of classical Marxism specifically.
But like Marx, Engels was ‘above all a revolutionary’, who also played a
role in revolutionary upheavals such as the German Revolution of 1848 and in
the international socialist movement.
When Engels died in London on 5 August 1895, at
the age of 74, his last wish was that following his cremation his ashes be
scattered off Beachy Head, near Eastbourne. Marx and Engels had visited many Victorian
seaside resorts, such as Margate, Ramsgate and the Isle of Wight, but
Eastbourne was Engels’s favourite place and where he holidayed for extended
periods during the summers in later life.
Engels wrote to Sorge on 18 March 1893 for example that he had spent two
weeks in Eastbourne and ‘had splendid weather’, coming back ‘very refreshed’.
As
part of the wider commemorations planned for Engels@200, Engels in Eastbourne welcomes
proposals for papers on any aspect of Engels’s life, work and intellectual and
political legacy. Themes may then
include but are not restricted to the following:
-
Engels’s relationship to Marx and Marxism
-
Engels’s anti-colonialism and internationalism
-
Engels’s understanding of the origins of women’s oppression
-
Engels’s analysis of natural science and the natural world
-
Engels’s understanding of religion
-
Engels’s analysis of capitalism and working class and peasant struggles
-
Engels’s concept of ‘social murder’
-
Engels’s role in revolutionary movements and relationship to other
revolutionaries
-
Representations and commemorations of Engels
Our
keynote speakers:
Tariq Ali is a writer and
filmmaker. He has written more than two dozen books on world history and
politics, and seven novels (translated into over a dozen languages) as well as
scripts for the stage and screen. He is an editor of New Left Review.
Terrell Carver is
Professor of Political Theory at the University of Bristol. He has degrees from
Columbia University and the University of Oxford, and has held visiting
appointments in the USA, Australia, Japan and China. He has published widely on
Marx, Engels and Marxism, including Friedrich Engels: His Life and Thought
(being re-issued for a 30th anniversary edition) and his current project
is a short book Engels Before Marx coming out in late 2020 as a ‘Palgrave
Pivot’.
Please
send proposals for papers of up to 250 words to Cathy Bergin c.j.bergin@brighton.ac.uk or Christian
Høgsbjerg c.hogsbjerg@brighton.ac.uk
by 31 January 2020.
Conference
supported by the Centre for Applied
Philosophy, Politics and Ethics and the Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories at the University of
Brighton
http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/re/mnh/centre-events/conferences/cmnh-conference-engels-in-eastbourne
http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/re/mnh/centre-events/conferences/cmnh-conference-engels-in-eastbourne
