Workshops > Lefts in power, coalitions and minorities in the Americas

LEFTS IN POWER, COALITIONS AND MINORITIES IN THE AMERICAS 

 Wednesday, June 14 from 9h00 to 11h00

Palais Hirsch, Salle des colloques 

Organization: Mathieu Bonzom (CESSP - Université Paris 1 - Panthéon Sorbonne) and Lissell Quiroz (AGORA - CY Cergy Paris Université)

Proposition

The left defies any attempt at a simple definition, and research projects supported and hosted by the Institut des Amériques should contribute to a renewal of debates about the historical and current dynamics of left political projects through a transatlantic lens. As a starting point, one can define the left as a set of political projects aiming at social transformation and individual and collective emancipation not only from social relations of class, but also of race and gender, and all forms of colonial, ethnic, national, imperialist, patriarchal oppression and domination, as well as planetary environmental perils. The proposed workshop topic would encompass the history and present state of left projects, in all their theoretical and practical, political, social, economic, cultural, literary, artistic dimensions, including bottom-up activism as well as top-down government action, institutional as well as informal deployments.

Attention has often been paid to the specificities of the left in the Americas, taking root in regions deeply affected by their colonial history, shaped by original forms of development of capitalism and the state, fueled or thwarted by political events that belong to respective national, sub- or supranational histories. However, it is also necessary to avoid any form of exceptionalism or methodological nationalism. Questions of transnational circulation can also prove quite thorny: while they may have been insufficiently studied by specialists of the left in Latin America, they have been under the spotlight in US history for somewhat dubious reasons, feeding into the trope of the “foreign”, “unAmerican” left. Measuring the integration of left projects to a broad transcontinental and/or transatlantic sphere, as well as their degree of national or local autonomy, accounting for their continental specificities in a balanced way, all of this requires undertaking systematic comparative work.

Contributions to this workshop will attempt to contribute to such work by confronting analyses of various left projects from at least three complementary points of view: the historical “genesis” of left projects, the origins and sources of their existence, not only their very beginning (which remains to be clearly situated chronologically) but throughout their trajectories; the specific characteristics of the left in the Americas, which have already generated deep discussions that require fresh evidence and arguments; the dynamics of the left, implying a sharp focus on political action, political events large and small, relations and balances of forces and their transformations, the agency of different sectors of society who have made and unmade the left throughout their history and until the present. All these questions may be addressed using multiple disciplinary approaches belonging to the humanities (history, sociology, political science, and many more).

Speakers

• Franck Gaudichaud (FRAMESPA - Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès) and Axel Nogué (FRAMESPA - Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès) - La bataille pour l’unité des gauches. Réflexion sociohistorique sur la construction des coalitions au Chili (de l’Unité populaire au Front large et des années 60 à nos jours)

• Sean Demoranville (CREW - Université Sorbonne Nouvelle) - Burlington, 1981-1989 et la transformation du projet municipal socialiste

• Olivier Maheo (TEMOS - Université d’Angers) - La gauche syndicale africaine-américaine, une question clé du mouvement syndical, 1930-1970. Le cas des syndicats de la métallurgie du Steel Workers Organizing Committee à l’USWA

• Sarah Dichy-Malherme (LER - Université Paris 8 Vincennes - Saint-Denis) - Les gauches équatoriennes et le mouvement indien : une relation nécessaire ?

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