11/5 Seminar, Dipesh Chakrabarty: “The Climate of History: Four Theses”
Guest Writer: Pronoy Rai
Thursday, November 7, 2013
posted under
Climate Change
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Dipesh Chakrabarty
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Pronoy Rai
by Unit for Criticism
“Discussions with Dipesh Chakrabarty”
Written by: Pronoy Rai (Geography)
After Dipesh Chakrabarty’s thought-provoking lecture the night before, the seminar provided an opportunity for students and faculty to engage with him on his work on the “climate of history” as well as his previous work in subaltern studies.
On the question of methods, Chakrabarty problematized the normative understanding of continuity in history. For Chakrabarty, the role of historical contingency in understanding our past or “long present” is significant. Since “contingency appends probability (of events happening),” Chakrabarty asked us to understand history by “zooming in” and “zooming out.” For example, would Marx have imagined the problem of anthropogenic climate change when he was writing Capital? Although Marx inhabited a space shaped by industrial capitalism he also critiqued classical political economy. This was just one of the many arguments that Chakrabarty offered to suggest that critical theory as usual is insufficient to deal with the challenges posed by climate change.
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