Revolutions have been the most salient aspect of political modernity and “the locomotives of history,” as Marx wrote in 1850. Beyond repeating the cliché that revolutions are the driving forces of social and political transformation, the goal in this class is to think through revolutions in their historical time as well as across history from the perspective of political anthropology. We will use the concepts of liminality, social dramas, crowd behavior, imitation, tricksters, and meaning formation. These concepts will allow to disentangle the study of revolutions from structures and the search for causes and outcomes, as well as from ideology, culture, and agency, opening them to a comparative analysis at the level of process, form, and symbolism. After a theoretical introduction, the course will turn its focus on historical experiences of the major socio-political revolutions of the modern era: from the “big three” revolutions (French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions), from the “third world” (Mexico, Cuba) to eastern Europe in 1989, from Iran (1978-1979) to the Arab Spring (2011). We will conclude by looking back at the main themes covered by the class and examining the prospect for revolutionary change in the contemporary world, thus considering whether the concept of revolution should be consigned, or not, to the “dustbin of history.” Students will be encouraged to develop comparisons across time and space.
Rosario FORLENZA
Séminaire
English
Weekly readings (academic articles and book chapters)
Spring 2023-2024
Participation and reading responses (35%), mid-term (25%), final paper (40%)
Combination of lectures and seminars (including teamwork activities)
Bjørn Thomassen, Notes Towards an Anthropology of Political Revolution, Comparative Studies in Society and History 54, no. 2 (2012): 679-706.