Capital, Crisis, and Class

Gopal Balakrishan
History of Consciousness
UC Santa Cruz

Asad Haider
History of Consciousness
UC Santa Cruz

Capitalism has emerged as a central theme for research in the humanities. Since the global economic crisis of 2008, it has become clear that scholars are returning to fundamental theoretical questions about the capitalist world-system. The “Crisis in the Cultures of Capitalism” conference – in conjunction with the two-year History of Consciousness initiative “Crisis in the Cultures of Capitalism” – brought together researchers to address the broad questions bridging specific paths of inquiry: the Marxian critique of political economy; theoretical and historical accounts of the early 2000s economic crisis; the future of class-based social movements, and their intersections with movements based on race and gender; the changing character of work and the category of “affective labor”; and cultural and aesthetic analysis of representations of capitalism and post-capitalist futures.