City Lights and University of Minnesota Press celebrate the publication of
Gramsci at Sea
by Sharad Chari
published by the University of Minnesota Press
Sharad Chari in conversation with Grant Farred explores how the crisis of the world ocean is produced by capitalism and imperialism.
This succinct work reads Antonio Gramsci’s writings on the sea and offers a fresh take on his work. Antonio Gramsci was a philosopher, writer, and political theorist who was an outstanding critic against fascism and best known for his theory of cultural hegemony.
Gramsci at Sea asks: How might an oceanic Gramsci speak to Black aquafuturism and other forms of oceanic critique? This succinct work reads Antonio Gramsci’s writings on the sea, focused in his prison notes on waves of imperial power in the inter-war oceans of his time. Sharad Chari argues that the imprisoned militant’s method is oceanic in form, and that this oceanic Marxism can attend to the roil of sociocultural dynamics, to waves of imperial power, as well as to the capacity of Black, Drexciyan, and other forms of oceanic critique to “storm” us on different shores.
Sharad Chari is associate professor of geography and critical theory at the University of California, Berkeley, and is affiliated with the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research and the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies. He is author of Fraternal Capital and Apartheid Remains (forthcoming).
Grant Farred is is the author of Long Distance Love: A Passion for Football and The Burden of Over-representation: Race, Sport, and Philosophy, and the editor of Africana Studies: Theoretical Futures (all Temple) . His most recent book is titled The Perversity of Gratitude: An Apartheid Education and it published by Temple University Press.
This event is made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation.