Karl Marx
York University’s Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies will host a lecture by Ranabir Samaddar on the topic of “Karl Marx and the Postcolonial Age” on Nov. 21 from 3:30 to 5:30pm in 2021 Vari Hall.
This free talk seeks to explicitly engage Marxist and post-colonial theory to place Marxism in the context of the post-colonial age.
Those who study Marx, particularly in the west, often lack an understanding of post-colonial realities; conversely, however, those who fashion post-colonial theory often have an inadequate understanding of Marx. Many think that Marx is not relevant to critique postcolonial realities and the legacy of Marx seldom reaches the post-colonial countries directly.
Samaddar’s talk will read Marx in the contemporary post-colonial condition and elaborate the current dynamics of post-colonial capitalism, by analyzing contemporary post-colonial history and politics in the framework of interrelations between the three categories of class, people, and postcolonial transformation.
Examining the structure of power in post-colonial countries and revisiting the revolutionary theory of dual power in that context, will appreciate and explain the transformative potentialities of Marx in relation to post-colonial condition.
Samaddar’s research focuses on the areas of migration and refugee studies, nationalism and post-colonial statehood in South Asia, new regimes of technological restructuring and labour control, and Marxism. His many works include A Biography of the Indian Nation, 1947-1997 (Sage, 2001); The Politics of Dialogue (Ashgate, 2004); The Materiality of Politics (Anthem Press, 2007), The Emergence of the Political Subject (Sage, 2009); and Karl Marx and the Postcolonial Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).