CFP: Solidarity and Class Struggle: Radical Philosophy Association Conference

Solidarity and Class Struggle

Sixteenth biennial Radical Philosophy Association Conference 

hosted by Utah Valley University and the University of Utah

October 10-12, 2024

Salt Lake City, UT

Keynote Speakers: 

Banu Bargu (University of California, Santa Cruz)

John Bellamy Foster (University of Oregon) 

Taking the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s death as an opportunity to reflect on the possibilities and problems faced by contemporary political movements, we are excited to invite papers on the theme, “Solidarity and Class Struggle,” to our 16th biennial conference. The war on the working class is waged with increasing violence, even as it takes different forms in various contexts. While capitalist exploitation characterizes the experience of all but a few of the world’s human inhabitants, the forms of oppression faced by those living in the global periphery, racial and ethnic others, migrants and stateless persons, women and LGBTQIA+ individuals, and other marginalized groups seem to complicate the picture of a working class united by universal interests. The question then arises as to the possibility of a shared struggle of the exploited despite their uneven experiences of oppression. How can class struggle help us overcome the barriers to unity? What are the conditions allowing for solidarity across difference?

Recognizing that solidarity and class struggle take many forms today, we welcome a broad variety of approaches to our conference’s topic, or in any area of radical philosophy. We are particularly interested in papers addressing any of the following themes: 

• The legacies of Lenin and subsequent developments of Marxist theories of class struggle

• The relationships between class and identity (including racial, gender, and sexual identity)

• The possibility of class solidarity across lines of division such as race, gender, ability, geography, etc.

• Processes of ideology production, including the role of ideology in fragmenting classes 

• Contemporary practices of working class organization around the world, for example, among gig economy workers, among college professors and graduate students, and in movements such as the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil, Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) in South Africa, and more

• The political economy of ecological devastation and the war on the working class

• The potential for emerging technologies (including artificial intelligence technologies and other forms of automation) to either intensify or block class struggle against capitalist exploitation

• Psychoanalysis’s contributions to the study of ideology and class struggle 

• Contemporary attacks on the working class through the erosion of public resources, including dwindling healthcare access (including reproductive healthcare and gender-affirming care), attacks on higher education, and more

• The global resurgence of fascism and its implications for ongoing class struggles

• Other topics within the broad spectrum of radical philosophy

Submissions

The Radical Philosophy AssociationConference Program Committee invites submissions of 250-500 word abstracts for talks, papers, workshops, or roundtable discussions. In keeping with the spirit of radical thinking embodied by the RPA, we also encourage submissions that employ formats and media that challenge the standard conference presentation (including workshops, interactive sessions, etc.). In recognition that radical philosophy is often done outside traditional philosophical settings, we want to encourage proposals from those working in other disciplines and/or outside of academia. We especially welcome contributions from those often excluded from or marginalized in academic philosophy, including BIPOC, LGBT+, persons with disabilities, and poor and working-class people.

Please submit paper, workshop, or other proposals related to the conference theme or general themes of the RPA as an email attachment (pdf, docx, doc, or txt) to [email protected] by February 15, 2024. Please identify if the submission is from a graduate student, so it can be considered for the Iris Marion Young Prize for Best Graduate Paper.