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Adom Getachew and Jennifer PittsDemocracy and Empire in Du Bois’s International Thought
Wednesday, April 26, 2023, 5:00–6:20pm
Professors Adom Getachew and Jennifer Pitts—both 3CT fellows—present a lecture drawing on their recent edited volume, W. E. B. Du Bois: International Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
W. E. B. Du Bois understood the modern world as structured by a racial capitalism, rooted in slavery and imperial commerce, that had taken a distinctive democratic form in the late nineteenth century. He revealed the many dimensions of the “world shadow” cast by what he called democratic despotism: protean forms of exploitation of land and labor, world war, and the complicity of seemingly emancipatory movements in domination. Du Bois remains among our most profound guides to the epistemic pitfalls of standard accounts of the international order and to theorizing global justice and democratic futures from a global present still shaped by empire.
The event will be introduced by Professor Demetra Kasimis and the Q&A will be led off with a comment by Professor Natasha Piano.
This event is free and open to the public, and registration is required. Please email us at ccct@uchicago.edu if you require any accommodations to enable your full participation.
Presented by the Classics of Social and Political Thought Core and co-sponsored by 3CT and the Forum on Law and Legalities
