The Forces of Globalization

In the Fall of 1995, the Critical Theory Institute began its project devoted to the general topic of “globalization” and a critical analysis of just what forces constitute “globalization” as the term and its related concepts are used today. Like other idioms of the intellectual community, such as “culture” in our previous research project (“‘Culture’ and the Problem of the Disciplines”), “globalization” is used with great frequency to describe complex processes and yet these uses are often uncritical of their ideological and methodological assumptions. In the tradition of our previous projects, we read critically the multiple assumptions behind the term, in order better to theorize the range of meanings associated with “globalization” today. [Full Project Description]

Irvine Lectures in Critical Theory:
Jean Comaroff (Anthropology, U Chicago)
“Alien-nation: Zombies, Immigrants & the Politics of Value in a Global Era”
February 10, 1999

Dipesh Chakrabarty (South Asian Studies and History of Culture, U. Chicago)
“Abstraction and Difference in the Work of Capital”
March 6, 1998

Elizabeth Grosz (Visiting Professor in the Critical Theory Emphasis, UC Irvine)
“Deleuze’s Bergson: Duration, the Virtual, and a Politics of the Future”
October 28, 1998

Etienne Balibar
“A Global Culture?”

Leslie Rabine
“Globalization from the Margins: The Case of African Fashion”

Verena Andermatt Conley (Literature Program, Harvard)
“Globalism and Environment: New Ecological Territories”
April 11, 1997

Roderick Nash (Environmental Studies, UC, Santa Barbara)
“The Wild World: Past, Present, and Future”
November 6, 1996

Jim Ferguson (Anthropology, UC Irvine)
“Transnational Topographies of Power: Beyond ‘the State’ and ‘Civil Society’ in the Study of African Politics”
April 4, 1996

Iain Chambers (Anglo-American literature, Istituto Universitario Orientale, Italy)
“A torn map, a fold in time, an interruption”
November 29, 1995