CFP | Quilting Points 2024:

Racial Capitalism and Cultural Resistance
01st May 2024

Call for Papers – PGR-led symposium
Deadline: 30th November
Abstracts: 250-words

The development, organization, and expansion of capitalist society pursued essentially racial directions, so too did social ideology. As a material force, then, it could be expected that racialism would inevitably permeate the social structures that emerged from capitalism (2)

Cedric Robinson – Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (2021)

Originally published in 1983, Cedric Robinson’s work Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition has proved critical in thinking through the relationship between race and capitalism in a global context. It has experienced a renewed wave of interest over the last decade because of the purchase that some of his concepts such as ‘racial capitalism’ and the ‘Black Radical Tradition’ have had within activist communities around the Black Lives Matter movement. This culminated in the rerelease of Black Marxism by Penguin Books in 2021.

In this text, Robinson writes that “the practice of theory is informed by struggle” (307). That the reverse is also true is evidenced by the quantity of subsequent cultural and political praxis that has been impacted by Black Marxism, both inside and outside of academia. Inspired by Robinson, this symposium intends to probe these epistemological questions around what kinds of knowledge are produced by struggle, and how forms of cultural and political practice can equally be influenced by theoretical concerns.

What are the ways in which culture can resist racial capitalism? What do such demonstrations at local and global scale signify for the role of art and activism? What are the structural roles of capital and race in policing entire communities?

With this in mind, we welcome abstracts for fifteen-minute presentations on topics related, but not limited to:

The cultural effects of racial capitalism

Resisting racial capitalism through art and activism

Forms of knowledge produced through cultural or political praxis

Interdisciplinary approach to reflect on the (cultural) stakes behind social praxis

Contemporary iterations of ‘The Black Radical Tradition’

History-writing as a mode of political praxis

Scholars at all levels of study are welcome to submit. We also welcome practice-based researchers. Please send abstracts to quiltingpoints@gmail.com, by the 30th November.

The symposium will take place at the University of Leeds. Specific details about the venue will appear closer to the date.