Collectivity and Universality: Categories in the Contemporary Humanities and Social Sciences

Abstract

This project is an investigation of concepts that serve to interpret human collectives and explain historical change. Since its modern inception, European human and social science has attributed historical agency to collectives by calling them "classes", "nations", "masses," "peoples" or "cultures" - terms that have profoundly shaped our historical consciousness. These terms are now contested, theoretically and politically, and researchers seek new ways of describing collective phenomena. Jonsson will chart the conceptual geography that emerges as scholars in philosophy, post-colonial studies, critical anthropology, and spatial cultural history trace collective modes of being and acting. Important notions will be "network," "subalternity," "multitude," "migrant," "flow," "movement," "community," and "humanity". The project is part of a national research program funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond at coordinated at Södertörn University.

Keywords:

Description

This project is an investigation of concepts that serve to interpret human collectives and explain historical change. Since its modern inception, European human and social science has attributed historical agency to collectives by calling them classes nations, masses, peoples, or cultures -- terms that have profoundly shaped our historical consciousness. These terms are now contested, theoretically and politically, and researchers seek new ways of describing collective phenomena. Jonsson will chart the conceptual geography that emerges as scholars in philosophy, post-colonial studies, critical anthropology, and spatial cultural history trace collective modes of being and acting. Important notions will be "network", "subalternity", "multitude", "migrant" "flow", "movement", "community", and "humanity". A study of this kind is needed because these ideas about the common and the universal heavily influence future developments of human and social science and its views of cultural transformations. Two hypotheses will be tried: (1) the new concepts avoid reference to fixed identities, thus rejecting prevalent modes of cultural analysis that see actions and artefacts as ?representations? of group identities; (2) they understand the collective as a spatial, rather than temporal or historical phenomenon. Consequently, a general aim is (3) to historicize these conceptions of collective being and action, so as to disclose that each presents a different model of a liveable social future. The project will result in an English monograph, to be translated into Swedish, and before that in articles for international journals.

Publications

Jonsson, Stefan (2010) "The Ideology of Universalism". New Left Review, 63 (May-June 2010): 115-126.
Jonsson, Stefan (2010) "The Ideology of Universalism". (Spanish transl.) New Left Review, 63 (jul-ago 2010): 111-122.
Jonsson, Stefan (2011) "Network and Subaltern: Antinomies of Contemporary Theory". In Rethinking Time: Essays on historical consciousness, memory, and representation, eds. Hans Ruin & Andrus Ers, (Södertörn University: Södertörn Philosophical Studies, 10, 2011): 189-198.
Jonsson, Stefan (2011) "The Ideology of Universalism: Or, One Good Reason to Celebrate Lenin". In Confronting Universalities: Aesthetics and Politics under the Sign of Globalisation. Ed. Mads Anders Baggesgaard & Jakob Ladegaard (Aarhus: Aarhus: University Press, 2011): 109-138.