Webinar hosted by LivingMaps Network in association with Compass
June 24th 18.30- 20.00
ZOOM DETAILS: Meeting ID: 477 004 7099 Password: mapsalive
LINK: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4770047099?pwd=R0t1dnlEL1FMNWhvNjNlOWRlS283UT09
Panel: Phil Cohen, Dick Pountain, Valerie Walkerdine, Lynne Segal, Ashwani Sharma
First there was Brexit. Then the Labour Party goes down to a historic defeat with its most radical Social Democratic agenda since 1945. Then widespread floods across the country presage an environmental apocalypse to come unless climate change is properly addressed. And now we have the advent of a pandemic on the epic scale of Spanish Flu after the First world war, to be almost certainly followed by a global economic recession. It is easy to Join up these very large dots into an overwhelming picture of doom and gloom, or alternatively to re-imagine them as the birth pangs of a new culture and society liberated from the toxic impact of consumerism and racism , making Black Lives Matter, re-valuing the labour of care, and building on the moral economy of mutual aid which has emerged so suddenly from ‘left field’.
The electrifying response of BAME communities and their supporters to the endemic racism revealed by the pandemic is certainly a cause for optimism. But as Gramsci well knew, optimism of the will, left to its own devices can lead to the kind of wishful thinking which characterises the exiteers and our present muddled transition from lockdown. Equally unalloyed pessimism of the intellect, which sections of the Left are also very good at, leads to the kind of armchair utopianism which has no real skin in the game and offers academic consolation for political defeats. We know it is difficult to find a balance, but this is a tight rope we will all have to learn to walk and which, in their different ways, the contributors to this webinar are taking some first steps towards.
Programme
Phil Cohen will map a range of responses, both official and popular to the pandemic and the measures that have been adopted to deal with it, focussing on what they tell us about the kind of society and political culture we live in.
Valerie Walkerdine will talk about her experience of canvassing in the 2019 election campaign in London and South Wales, for what this reveals about the dynamics of affiliation and disaffection towards the Labour Party’s programme.
Dick Pountain will examine the limits and conditions of Left re-grouping around a Green New Deal as a plan for economic recovery.
Interlocutors
Ashwani Sharma will respond to the speakers by reflecting on the refrain ‘I can’t breathe’ in terms of race and death in relation to the pandemic, police violence and protests for racial justice. Does the mourning of black death, and the removal of monuments to slavery and imperialism require us to rethink the relationship between public memory, nation and Left politics?
Lynne Segal will discuss how the pandemic has made publicly visible for perhaps the first time the central role played by the labour of care, whether carried out in care homes, hospitals or the family, in maintaining the fabric of civil society and just how disregarded and under valued this work, mainly done by women and members of the BAME community has been. How can this scandal be addressed and what needs to change in our politics, culture and economy to make this happen.