Seminar: Iain Stewart, "Thinking Democracy after Marx and Empire"

ABSTRACT:
This talk examines how decolonization informed the development of a new democratic theory at the end of the Algerian War, with far-reaching consequences for intellectual politics in France and beyond during the final decades of the twentieth century. It is based on a case study of the Cercle Saint-Just, a political discussion group whose meetings between 1963 and 1966 on the theme of democracy were attended by leading figures from the Parti Socialiste Unifié (PSU), the Confédération française démocratique du travail, and leftist intellectuals previously associated with the groups Arguments and Socialisme ou Barbarie. By studying this group’s origins, the talk firstly offers a new perspective on the history of the French new left, that of an explicitly “liberal new left” in which anti-colonialism culminated not in “third wordlist” neo-Marxism but a post-Marxist democratic theory. Liberalism was soon abandoned as an explicit identity amidst the ideological reshuffling which accompanied the establishment of the PSU. But this new left was nevertheless increasingly deeply influenced by a then half-forgotten French liberal tradition which the Cercle Saint-Just rehabilitated for a post-Marxist left amidst intense controversy over the identity and orientation of the PSU after the Algerian War. By recovering this history, the talk also casts new light on the origins of a phenomenon usually seen as beginning in the mid-1970s, France’s “liberal moment,” offering a new explanation for its complicated relationship with the history of empire.

BIO:
Iain Stewart is a historian at UCL and a former fellow of the Institut d’études avancées de Paris.