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The Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: Events
Thursday, 18 April 2024, 11:00Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Am Wingertsberg 4, 61348 Bad Homburg
Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften of Goethe University
FKH colloquium
Cain Shelley
»Class Consciousness After the Intersectional Turn«
Abstract
Which beliefs, perceptions, desires and intentions should members of the working class possess if they are going to effectively contribute to the political struggle for a socialist society? Despite the importance of this question for socialists, questions of class consciousness have not featured much in the recent revival of socialist theorizing among political philosophers. In this talk, I want to take some steps towards addressing this gap. I will argue that the work of the radical Black feminist scholars Patricia Hill Collins and Kimberlé Crenshaw can productively inform a novel account of the kind of class consciousness twenty-first century socialists should seek to develop among the working class.
The talk should have two major upshots. First, it hopes to bring some order and clarity to what has become a very messy debate about the nature and meaning of intersectionality, by systematizing several of the most significant theses grouped under the »intersectional« banner. Second, socialists have often been very wary of, even hostile to, intersectional ideas. But I hope to show that socialist dismissals of radical Black feminist thought usually rest on mischaracterisations, and that this body of ideas deserves far more serious and charitable consideration from socialists in the future.
The speaker
Cain Shelley is currently a fellow in the Global Health Justice Postdoctoral Programme at Goethe University Frankfurt. Previously he was, on the invitation of the Justitia Center for Advanced Studies at Goethe University, a postdoctoral fellow at the Forschungskolleg. He received his PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2022, for a thesis entitled »Justice & Class Consciousness: A Theory of Political Transition«. His research has been published in the Journal of Political Philosophy and the European Journal of Political Theory.
Participation
Please let us know by Friday, 12 of April, if you plan to attend the discussion and the following lunch.
Contact: Beate Sutterlüty; email: b.sutterluety@forschungskolleg-humanwissenschaften.de).
