Balibar/Wallerstein’s “Race, Nation, Class”: Rereading a Dialogue for Our Times

Image: Processed version of the work of art Impossible triangle, 1934 with special permission © Oscar Reutersvärd / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018, Design: NODE Berlin Oslo

Edited by Manuela Bojadžijev and Katrin Klingan
Haus der Kulturen der Welt / Argument Verlag, 2018
338 pages, 7 illustrations, in English
ISBN 978-3-86754-511-2
Price: 20€

Available at Haus der Kulturen der Welt and at bookstores, mail order buying / postal shopping via the Webshop

Since its first publication in French in 1988, Race, Nation, Classe. Les Identités ambiguës has been translated into nine languages, sparking an intriguing variety of discussions. How were Balibar and Wallerstein’s theses expanded, adapted, and criticized? How can the questions raised in the book be connected with their manifold reverberations still found today? How have they shifted in diverse local contexts? Published alongside the symposium Dangerous Conjunctures. Resituating Balibar/Wallerstein‘s "Race, Nation, Class" the contributions to this publication reflect the book’s reception and the relevance of its topics for both past and present. Authors from diverse local contexts worldwide—from Argentina through South Africa and Palestine to India and Japan—investigate its impact in relation to local political and social developments. Furthermore, workshops that took place between November 2017 and January 2018 in Ankara, Belgrade, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Kolkata, and Cape Town, discussed the current conjuncture of racism, class relations, and nationalisms. Together, the essays and findings of the workshops provide a basis for a “practice of theory” that Race, Nation, Class advocates, and which is urgently needed in the current global predicament.

With contributions by: Norman Ajari, Rana Anani, Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Samata Biswas, Manuela Bojadžijev, Petar Bojanić, Tanıl Bora, Maria Chehonadskih, Karl Dahlquist, William Ellis, Andrea Fagioli, Marjan Ivković and Djurdja Trajković, Matan Kaminer, Dimitris Kousouris, Alex Taek-Gwang Lee, Nasser Mufti, Chikako Nakayama, Maurilio Pirone, Philippe Rekacewicz, Ranabir Samaddar, John Solomos, Mark Terkessidis

Mar 15–17, 2018

Dangerous Conjunctures

Resituating Balibar/Wallerstein‘s “Race, Nation, Class”

Racism articulates itself through class relations and intensifies in nationalist currents. A new understanding of this dynamic is needed in order to create emancipatory and solidary social models. That is the diagnosis of the seminal volume Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities by Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein. Thirty years after it was first published - at a time when this sinister triad rises again - it is urgent to redefine the ambiguous effects of their relations.