The Greatest Festival of the Nineteenth Century: Revisiting the Situationists' 'Theses on the Paris Commune'

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A webinar with Dr Alastair Hemmens (Cardiff University) and Professor Gabriel Zacarias (University of Campinas, Brazil) run by the History and Heritage research theme under the School-wide Cultures of Crisis research theme.

Find out more about the School of Modern Language’s research themes.

Abstract
2021 marks the 150th anniversary of the 1871 Paris Commune. Following France’s catastrophic defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, embittered Parisians rose up and declared a radical socialist government in the city. For seventy days between March and May 1871, the Commune attempted to revolutionise Parisian society, before finally succumbing to an infamously bloody assault by the French army.

Characterised by Marx as a genuine proletarian uprising, the Paris Commune has long played a central role in anti-capitalist thought. In this interview, Dr Alastair Hemmens and Professor Gabriel Zacarias (University of Campinas, Brazil) discuss their ongoing research into the Situationist International, a radical artistic movement whose Theses on the Paris Commune (1962) contributed both to left-wing critiques of orthodox Marxism and to the movement’s own theories of social space, which continue to inform discussions around everyday life in capitalist societies today.

The event will consist of an online interview and will be presented by Samuel Young, Postgraduate Research Co-Lead for the History and Heritage research theme.

Biographies
Dr Alastair Hemmens is a lecturer in French at the School of Modern Languages, specialising in critical theory and European intellectual and cultural history. Dr Hemmens recently published The Critique of Work in Modern French Thought, from Charles Fourier to Guy Debord (2019) and co-edited The Situationist International: A Critical Handbook (2020). He has also translated work by the philosopher Anselm Jappe, including The writing on the wall: on the decomposition of capitalism and its critics (2017).

Gabriel Zacarias is a professor in History at the University of Campinas (Brazil) and a Visiting Research Fellow at Yale University. Prof. Zacarias has researched the Situationists and Guy Debord in great depth, contributing to the edited volume Lire Debord (2015) and co-editing The Situationist International: A Critical Handbook (2020). He also recently published the essay ‘No espelho do terror: jihad e espetáculo’ (2018), which explores terrorism as part of the crisis of late capitalism.

Simultaneous Translation
The event will be delivered in the medium of English. You are welcome to ask questions in the medium of Welsh during the Q&A session. If you intend to do this, please contact mlang-events@cardiff.ac.uk by Friday 5 March to request simultaneous translation. Please note that 10% or more of those planning to attend will need to request this provision in order for it to be sourced and will be subject to resource availability.

Registration
We apologise that the entire registration page is not available in the medium of Welsh. Unfortunately, the platform we use does not offer this service.

Recording of Event
Please note this event will be recorded.