Symposium: 30 Years of Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Power Relations

Three-Day Symposium

Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein—Rereading a Dialog for Our Times

Racism articulates itself through class relations and becomes intensified through nationalist currents. How can we understand this dynamic today? Thirty years after the initial publication of the seminal volume Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities by Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein—at a time when this sinister triad is on the rise again—a group of international theorists and activists will redefine the effects of their relations. 

In 1988 Balibar and Wallerstein wrote about the clear entanglements of racism with changing class relations and the historical formation of the nation state. The virulence of this utterly ambiguous relation can also be seen today in the ongoing struggles over rights and political participation by migrants in Europe—as well as in the struggle over the mere possibility of migrating. In the course of global capitalism racist structures are becoming realigned, not only in Europe, and established class relations are being fundamentally transformed. States in their form as nations are being confronted with forces of flight and circulation that seem to leave them obsolete: financialization, digitization, logistics, international governance, or the global networking of legislative regimes. 

Along with Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein the participants in this three-day symposium will venture to understand our present moment from a variety of perspectives. What are the important questions and tasks needed to propose a society with more solidarity and justice?

With

• Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein,
• Brenna Bhandar,
• Petar Bojanić,
• Maria Chehonadskih,
• Verónica Gago,
• Kelly Gillespie,
• Ruth Wilson Gilmore,
• David Theo Goldberg,
• Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar,
• Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani,
• Geraldine Heng,
• Sandro Mezzadra,
• Antonio Negri,
• Ranabir Samaddar,
• Nishant Shah,
• Kaushik Sunder Rajan,
• Françoise Vergès,
• Zimitri Erasmus, and many others.     ­

Curated by

• Manuela Bojadžijev and Katrin Klingan

Further information: Haus der Kulturen der Welt

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