[Usyd_Classics_Events] Critical Antiquities Workshop – James Martel

[Andrew Poe]

Dear all,

At the next Critical Antiquities Workshop, we are pleased to host Prof. James Martel  (SFSU), who will deliver his paper, “Blasting out of History: The Challenge of Inca Communism”.

Here is the abstract:


In his "On the Concept of History," Walter Benjamin argues that engaging with the past had a radical effect on the present. This was because each time period had a specific material reality of its own and each could disrupt the certainties and oppressions of the other, those systems of power that Benjamin calls "mythic violence" and what I like to call archism. In this talk, I will engage with that framework to consider the claim by the Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui that communism lies, not only in the future, but also in the distant past in the form of what he calls "Inca communism." Inca communism was (and remains) a form of societal organization that defied the Incan empire itself—and actually preceded it. It has survived to the present day in the form of the ayllu, deeply organized kinship networks that helped the Indigenous communities of the Andean Highlands to survive the Spanish conquest, genocide, the rise of liberal nation states and now neoliberalism. In some sense the ongoing existence of the ayllu form could be seen as a concrete example of how different historical eras can coexist and disrupt each other. At the same time, the ayllu has not remained static since its inception. The ayllu is as contemporary as archism and it remains as a challenge and also a political and social model that Western leftists might look to to better understand how to resist and even overthrow archist power.

This event will be held in a hybrid format in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Meeting Room N301 at the University of Sydney and on Zoom on Wednesday, May 6, 10:00 am - 12:00 noon (Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne time).

Here is the time in other locations:


  *   Los Angeles/Vancouver: Tuesday, May 5, 5:00-7:00 pm
  *   Chicago/Mexico City: Tuesday, May 5, 7:00-9:00 pm
  *   New York: Tuesday, May 5, 8:00-10:00 pm
  *   Santiago/Buenos Aires/Rio de Janeiro: Tuesday, May 5, 8:00-10:00 pm
  *   Dublin/Belfast/London: Wednesday, May 6, 1:00-3:00 am
  *   Paris/Berlin/Rome: Wednesday, May 6, 2:00-4:00 am
  *   Johannesburg/Athens/Cairo: Wednesday, May 6, 3:00-5:00 am
  *   Beijing/Singapore/Perth: Wednesday, May 6, 8:00-10:00 am
  *   Tokyo: Wednesday, May 6, 9:00-11:00 am
  *   Darwin: Wednesday, May 6, 9:30-11:30 am
  *   Brisbane: Wednesday, May 6, 10:00 am - 12:00 noon
  *   Adelaide: Wednesday, May 6, 9:30-11:30 am

To register, please sign up for the Critical Antiquities Network mailing list to receive Zoom links and CAN announcements:
https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/FKTOCOMKzVT0l8oAruEfKTGg2_O?domain=signup.e2ma.net

We hope to see you there,

Tristan Bradshaw (UoW)
Ben Brown (USyd)
Tom Geue  (ANU)
Andy Poe (ACU)

https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/PD2oCP7LAXfo9wq4Au0hmTxIg1v?domain=criticalantiquities.org


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