During the last decades, political historians have increasingly focused on the evolution of political consciousness among the “common people” during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In that process they have often made use of all-encompassing notions such as politicization, democratization and nationalization. The conference “Subaltern political knowledges” intends to take one step back and ask a question which should precede all discussion of politicization, democratization and nationalization of the masses: what did people actually know about politics?

Presentation

During the last decades, political historians have increasingly focused on the evolution of political consciousness among the “common people” during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In that process they have often made use of all-encompassing notions such as politicization, democratization and nationalization. The conference “Subaltern political knowledges” intends to take one step back and ask a question which should precede all discussion of politicization, democratization and nationalization of the masses: what did people actually know about politics?

Conference venue

FelixArchief (reception room and auditorium) Oude Leeuwenrui 29
2000 Antwerp
Belgium 

Programme

October 18th: 16.30h – 18h 

• 16.30h – 17h: Registration, welcome
• 17h – 17.40h: Prof. Dr. Dana Nelson, Vanderbilt University Opening lecture: Democracy Without Sovereignty
• 17.40h – 18h: Discussion 

October 19th: 9h – 17h 

Group 1: Subaltern views on citizenship during colonial rule 

• 9h – 9.40h: Prof. Dr. Rachel Jean-Baptiste, UCDavis. Keynotespeech: We Will Remain Métis: Racecraft, Citizenship, and Political Subjectivities in Late Colonial Francophone Africa
• 9.40h – 10h: Christophe Ralite (MA), University of Lyon, The ways to politics in Cameroon: men and networks (1944-1962) 
• 10h – 10.20h: Dr. Aparna Balachandran, University of Delhi. Politics, Subalterns and the Early Modern Public in South India
• 10.20h – 10.35h: Coffee break
• 10.35h – 10.55h: (Video-conferencing) Neha Chatterji (MA), Jawaharlal Nehru University Subaltern Caste Concepts of the ‘Political’, Bengal, 1900-1930
• 10.55h – 11.15h: Dr. Vijay Kumar Nawarija, University of Delhi, The Politics of Representation and Self-representation in Colonial India: Tradition, Caste, Dalit in the Colonial Lexicography
• 11.15h – 11.35h: Discussion 

Group 2: Subaltern views on state-formation and sovereignty 

• 11.35h. – 12.15h: Dr. Harm Kaal, Radboud University Nijmegen. Keynote speech: The Voice of the People. Popular politics and political representation in the postwar years
• 12.15h – 12.35h: Dr. Joris Oddens, Leiden University, Insular subalternity. Dutch state formation around 1800 as seen from the island of Ameland
• 12.35h – 13.25h Lunch
• 13.25h – 13.45h: Dr. Matti La Mela (European University Institute) and Dr. Onni Pekonen (Leiden University), National representative politics viewed by local communities and their first-term members in the Grand Duchy of Finland in the late nineteenth century
• 13.45h – 14.05h: Divyani (MA), Jawaharlal Nehru University, Post-colonial ‘Khalistan’ and the people
• 14.05h – 14.25h: Discussion 

Group 3: Transmission of political knowledge: between ‘pre-political’ and ‘political’ (19th century) 

• 14.25h – 15.05h: Dr. Maartje Janse, Leiden University, Keynote speech: ‘Everything was possible with this organization’: Inventing the pressure group, reimagining politics, c. 1820-1870
• 15.05h – 15.25h: Dr. Pierre-Marie Delpu, Aix-Marseille Université, Subaltern Martyrs and Liberal Politics : Knowledge Transmission and Policisation (Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, 1848-1860)
• 15.25h – 15.40h Coffee break
• 15.40h – 16h Dr. David Hopkin, Hertford College, University of Oxford, Remembering Feudalism in Nineteenth-Century Rural France: Legends of Shepherdess Saints and Murderous Seigneurs
• 16h – 16.20h: Dr. Manjeet Baruah, Jawaharlal Nehru University (Cannot be present. Video-conferencing instead?) Locating the Peasant between British and Burmese Imperialisms: Narratives and 19th century Empire Making in the Borderlands of Assam
• 16.20h – 16.40h Andrei Sorescu (MA), UCL School of Slavonic & East European Studies (University College London) History from Below and Incomplete Memory? (De)Politicizing Folk Beliefs in Nineteenth Century Romania 16.40h – 17h
• Discussion 

October 20th: 9h – 15.50h 

Group 4: Clientelism and patronage in relation to democracy and politicization 

• 9h – 9.40h: Prof. Dr. Frédéric Monier, University of Avignon, Keynote: Outsiders? Democratic patronage and subalterns (France, Spain, Italy, ca. 1875- ca. 1935)
• 9.40h – 10h: Prof. Dr. Marnix Beyen, University of Antwerp. Sources of political knowledge in interactions between deputies and ‘ordinary citizens’ Paris, ca. 1890 – ca. 1930.
• 10h – 10.20h: Dr. Sami Suodenjoki, University of Helsinki. A leap towards local democracy? Lower-class conceptions of the municipal council system in Finland, 1865–1917
• 10.20h – 10.35h Coffee break
• 10.35h – 10.55h: Aditya Kiran Kakati (MA), Princeton University. Leveraging Loyalty: ambivalence and information in reading political agency during the Second World War in the Indo-Myanmar (Burma) frontier
• 10.55h – 11.15h Dr. Fabian Braendle, independent researcher, Zürich, Swiss Popular Autobiography and the Micro-politics of Direct Democracy in the late 19th Century 

Group 5: National politics and the people: petitioning from below 

Part 1: Sources and interpretive problems

• 11.15h – 11.55h: Prof. Dr. Eduardo Elena, University of Miami, Keynote: Politics and the People: Interpretive Problems and Research Trends in Modern Latin American History (especially Argentina, 1860s-1970s) 
• 11.55h – 12.15h Dr. Anne Petterson, Leiden University, The political horizon of the Dutch ‘ordinary’ citizen: petitions, 1870-1920
• 12.15h – 13.15h Lunch

Part 2: Gender and class/caste

• 13.15h – 13.35h: Ayse Zeren-Enis (MA), SUNY Binghamton University, Petitioning to the Hamidian State: Poor Ottoman Muslim Women and Their Requests for Aid
• 13.35h – 13.55h: Karen Lauwers (MA), University of Antwerp, Political participation and knowledges of French women in a Republic that still failed to recognize them as citizens, ca.1900-1930s
• 13.55h – 14.15h: Ashoka Vardhan (BA), University of Delhi, Locating the Subaltern in the No Tax Campaign at Bardoli, 1928
• 14.15h – 14.30h Coffee break
• 14.30h – 14.50h Discussion 

Closing session 

• 14.50h – 15.30h Prof. Dr. Michaela Fenske, University of Würzburg Keynote / closing lecture
• 15.30h – 15.50h Concluding discussion