From: Dave Berry
Call for papers
Les forces de révolution
Forces for radical social change in France today
Annual conference of the Association for the Study of Modern & Contemporary France, Loughborough University, 8-10 September 2005
Les Forces de révolution was the title chosen by the veteran revolutionary activist and orator Sébastien Faure for a series of talks delivered during a tour of the country at the start of the 1920s. At a time when the Right was triumphant and when the Left and the labour movement were divided and in disarray, Faure-concerned to reassert faith in the revolutionary ideal-sought to provide a panorama of the various organizations, movements and ideological currents present in France which, he believed, remained a force for radical social change: anarchists, socialists, syndicalists, free-thinkers, co-operatists and so on.
Twenty years after the 'tournant' of 1983, ten years after the arguably historic events of 1995, after the collapse of Mitterrandisme-Jospinisme, after the failure of the attempt to reform French communism and after the paradoxical outcomes of the 2002 presidential elections, this conference aims to ask similar questions about the state of the revolutionary 'project' in France and about those individuals, movements and organisations whose aim is radical social change. What possible meaning(s) can 'Revolution' have today? Has the idea of social transformation been definitively discredited?
Possible topics could include the following:
- the Plural Left and the radical potential of elements within it
- the nature and significance of the new social movements which haveappeared since the early 1990s
- new conceptions of citizenship and democracy
- new forms of political activism
- the state of the trade union movement and industrial relationssince 1995
- to what extent 1995 and 2002 were significant turning-points
- antiracism/antifascism
- new debates and directions within the feminist movement
- anticolonialism
- radical sexual politics
- the apparent resurgence in recent years of ideological currentspreviously consigned to the dustbin of history: trotskyism and anarchism
- the resurgence (since 1995) of the debate about class conflict
- the resurgence of anti-Americanism/anti-imperialism and itspolitical significance
- resonances in France of Seattle and the global anti-capitalistmovement
- the impact on French radical politics of the European Social Forumin St.-Denis
- the collapse and rebuilding of the intellectual Left
- film and documentary
Please send proposals for papers (title and abstract), by 15 June, to DrDave Berry, (Department of Politics, International Relations & European Studies, Loughborough University, LE113TU).
Guest speakers: Christine Delphy (the feminist movement) [TBC], StéphaneRozès (public opinion), Georges Ubbiali (historiography of thetrotskyist movement).
Other speakers to date include: Gill Allwood (refugee women's activism), Ian Birchall (trotskyism), Gavin Bowd (the PCF), Keith Dixon (the politics of Raisons d'agir), Jonathan Ervine (film against the double peine), Sharif Gemie (anarchism and Islam), Françoise Gollain (Mouvement pour la décroissance), Daniel Gordon (revolutionaries and immigration), Stephanie Hare-Cuming (conflicting commemorations of the Algerian War), Sue Milner (social movement unionism), Bernie Moss (the EU and the social divide), Martin O'Shaughnessy (cinema and resistance), Nick Parsons (trade unionism and social democracy), Georges Salemohamed ('Neo-management'), Jeremy Tranmer (the alternative left), Khursheed Wadia (grassroots mobilisation of refugee women), Sarah Waters (revolution in a global society - Attac), Steve Wharton (LGBT rights), Jim Wolfreys (the social movement and politics since 1995).
The Peter Morris Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Professor BrianJenkins
For a booking form, please mail ***Dr David Berry
Department of Politics, International Relations & European Studies
Loughborough University
LE11 3TU
GB
Tel: +44-(0)1509-222988
Fax: +44-(0)1509-223917
Web: www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~eudgb/