'Crisis and Critique': Historical Materialism Annual London Conference  
2010,

Central London, Thursday 11th to Sunday 14th November*

Call for Papers

Submission and Abstract Deadline: 1 June 2010



Notwithstanding repeated invocations of the ‘green shoots of  
recovery’, the effects of the economic crisis that began in 2008  
continue to be felt around the world. While some central tenets of the  
neoliberal project have been called into question, bank bailouts, cuts  
to public services and attacks on working people's lives demonstrate  
that the ruling order remains capable of imposing its agenda. Many  
significant Marxist analyses have already been produced of the  
origins, forms and prospects of the crisis, and we look forward to  
furthering these debates at HM London 2010. We also aim to encourage  
dialogue between the critique of political economy and other modes of  
criticism – ideological, political, aesthetic, philosophical – central  
to the Marxist tradition.



In the 1930s, Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht projected a journal  
to be called ‘Crisis and Critique’. In very different times, but in a  
similar spirit, HM London 2010 aims to serve as a forum for dialogue,  
interaction and debate between different strands of critical-Marxist  
theory. Whether their focus is the study of the capitalist mode of  
production's theoretical and practical foundations, the unmasking of  
its ideological forms of legitimation or its political negation, we  
are convinced that a renewed and politically effective Marxism will  
need to rely on all the resources of critique in the years ahead.  
Crises produce periods of ideological and political uncertainty. They  
are moments that put into question established cognitive and  
disciplinary compartmentalisations, and require a recomposition at the  
level of both theory and practice. HM London 2010 hopes to contribute  
to a broader dialogue on the Left aimed at such a recomposition, one  
of whose prerequisites remains the young Marx’s call for the ‘ruthless  
criticism of all that exists’.



We are seeking papers that respond to the current crisis from a range  
of Marxist perspectives, but also submissions that try to think about  
crisis and critique in their widest ramifications. HM will also  
consider proposals on themes and topics of interest to critical- 
Marxist theory not directly linked to the call for papers (we  
particularly welcome contributions on non-Western Marxism and on  
empirical enquiries employing Marxist methods).



While Historical Materialism is happy to receive proposals for panels,  
the editorial board reserves the right to change the composition of  
panels or to reject individual papers from panel proposals. We also  
expect all participants to attend the whole conference and not simply  
make ‘cameo’ appearances. We cannot accommodate special requests for  
specific slots or days, except in highly exceptional circumstances.



*Please note that, in order to allow for expected demand, this year  
the conference will be three and a half days’ long, starting on the  
Thursday afternoon.





Please submit a title and abstract of between 200 and 300 words by  
registering at http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/conferences/annual7/submit 
  by 1 June 2010



Possible themes include:

       •       Crisis and left recomposition

       •       Critique and crisis in the global south

       •       Anti-racist critique

       •       Marxist and non-Marxist theories of crisis

       •       Capitalist and anti-capitalist uses of the crisis

       •       Global dimensions of the crisis

       •       Comparative and historical accounts of capitalist crisis

       •       Ecological and economic crisis

       •       Critical theory today

       •       Finance and the crisis

       •       Neoliberalism and legitimation crisis

       •       Negation and negativity

       •       Feminism and critique

       •       Political imaginaries of crisis and catastrophe

       •       The critique of everyday life (Lefebvre, the  
situationists etc.)

       •       The idea of critique in Marx, his predecessors and  
contemporaries

       •       Art criticism, political critique and the critique of  
political economy

       •       Geography and crisis, geography and the critique of  
political economy

       •       Right-wing movements and crisis

       •       Critiques of the concept of crisis

       •       New forms of critique in the social and human sciences

       •       Aesthetic critique

       •       Marxist literary and cultural criticism

       •       Reports on recent evolution of former USSR countries  
and China