Chris Moffat
Biographic Data
| ID | 368720 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Chris Moffat |
| GIVEN NAMES | Chris |
| FAMILY NAME | Moffat |
| SIGNATURE | MOFFAT C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queen Mary University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6018-3270 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 34 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Ranajit Guha's Garden: Ranajit Guha (1923-2023)
Towards Peoples' Histories in Pakistan: (In)audible Voices, Forgotten Pasts
What would Walter Benjamin have made of Pakistan? One might imagine the German critic, a famous collector, in one of Saddar's busy bazaars, his arms full of handicrafts and other souvenirs. We know from Benjamin's archives that he regularly sent postcards—would he be drawn to purchase images of Mazaar-e-Quaid? Mohenjodaro? Shahi Qila? Would the shopping malls of Islamabad prompt any comparisons to the Parisian arcades to which he devoted so much …
In the Bargain Bin
Lahore After the Modern: Architecture, Equality and Community in Yasmeen Lari’s Anguri Bagh
The problem of home was, in a sense, the founding problem of Pakistan: first, in the call for a new ‘homeland’ for South Asia’s Muslims, but also because its creation provoked displacement and a condition of homelessness. The population transfers and refugee camps that accompanied the 1947 partition of India were succeeded by housing crises prompted by industrialisation and urbanization. Debates over the responsibility of government authorities t…
S uchetana C hattopadhyay . Voices of Komagata Maru: Imperial Surveillance and Workers from Punjab in Bengal
I first glimpsed the Komagata Maru as an undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo. It was pictured on the opening slide for a first-year Introduction to Politics lecture, and the professor’s aim was to shake the assembled audience of young Canadians out of the comfortable certainties and easy patriotisms enshrined in high school civics lessons. Here, in Vancouver, in May 1914, immigration officials refused to allow the Komagata Maru, a…
Building, Dwelling, Dying: Architecture and History in Pakistan
There is a long history of scholars finding in architecture tools for thinking, whether this is the relationship between nature and culture in Simmel's ruins, industrial capitalism in Benjamin's Parisian arcades, or the rhythms of the primordial in Heidegger's Black Forest farmhouse. But what does it mean to take seriously the concepts and dispositions articulated by architects themselves? How might processes of designing and making constitute pa…
The Itinerant Library of Lala Lajpat Rai
This essay traces the movements of a library from New York to Lahore in the wake of the First World War and then to Shimla and Chandigarh following the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. It explores how this collection of books, assembled by the anti-colonial nationalist Lajpat Rai (1865-1928), intersected with and informed key moments of political struggle in twentieth-century urban America and colonial India. The essay then considers…
History in Pakistan and the Will to Architecture
This essay serves as both an introduction to the themed section and a provocation regarding a possible agenda for the anthropology of history in Pakistan. It considers the implications of Faisal Devji's argument that unity in Pakistan was originally pursued through a rejection of history, suggesting that attempts to identify an inheritance—to articulate the form and nature of a responsibility to the past—have proved intellectually and politically…
India's Revolutionary Inheritance: Politics and the Promise of Bhagat Singh
What do anti-colonial histories mean for politics in contemporary India? How can we understand a political terrain that appears crowded with the dead, heroic figures from past struggles who call the living to account and demand action? What role do these 'afterlives' play in the inauguration of new politics and the fashioning of possible futures? In this engaging and innovative analysis of anti-colonial afterlives in modern South Asia, Chris Moff…
"Against "Cultures of Hiatus
This essay examines the relationship between a radical politics and the institution of the archive through a history of the George Padmore Institute (GPI), a community archive attached to New Beacon Books in London. Focusing on the life and thought of John La Rose (1927–2006)—Trinidadian poet, publisher, activist, and founder of the institute—the essay explores how a politics of hope is articulated in relation to competing priorities of “foundati…
Politics and the Work of the Dead in Modern India
This article provides a framework for understanding the continuing political potential of the anticolonial dead in twenty-first-century India. It demonstrates how scholars might move beyond histories of reception to interrogate the force of inheritance in contemporary political life. Rather than the willful conjuring of the dead by the living, for a politics in the present, it considers the more provocative possibility that the dead might themsel…
On the Form, Politics and Effects of Writing Revolution
peerreview_statement: The publishing and review policy for this title is described in its Aims & Scope. aims_and_scope_url: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=csas20
Bhagat Singh's Corpse
This article explores how a sense of responsibility toward the revolutionary Bhagat Singh (1907-1931) is mediated by and articulated through a relationship with the martyr’s written remains. It considers how efforts to reconstruct the ‘real’ Bhagat Singh propel a polemic around the ‘proper’ subject of Indian politics, one that destabilizes common sense nationalist narratives and extant autobiographies of the Indian left. These interventions must,…
The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and his Empire of Truth by Dipesh Chakrabarty
Reviewed by: The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and his Empire of Truth by Dipesh Chakrabarty Chris Moffat The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and his Empire of Truth By Dipesh Chakrabarty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. At the end of his new book, The Calling of History, Dipesh Chakrabarty announces an impressive aptitude for the art of necromancy. Entering the corridors of 10 Lake Terrace, Calcutta, he successfully…
Experiments in political truth
This article begins with that classic question of revolutionary politics: ‘What is to be done?’ Its concern is not, however, the provision of a coherent answer, nor the designation of a future to be reached. It traces instead the spirit of asking – the call to critically engage the present as a platform for action. This is to understand politics as active thought: as an art or craft rather than the mastery of certain theories. A responsive, inter…
India's Revolutionary Inheritance: Politics and the Promise of Bhagat Singh
What do anti-colonial histories mean for politics in contemporary India? How can we understand a political terrain that appears crowded with the dead, heroic figures from past struggles who call the living to account and demand action? What role do these 'afterlives' play in the inauguration of new politics and the fashioning of possible futures? In this engaging and innovative analysis of anti-colonial afterlives in modern South Asia, Chris Moff…
Politics and the Work of the Dead in Modern India
This article provides a framework for understanding the continuing political potential of the anticolonial dead in twenty-first-century India. It demonstrates how scholars might move beyond histories of reception to interrogate the force of inheritance in contemporary political life. Rather than the willful conjuring of the dead by the living, for a politics in the present, it considers the more provocative possibility that the dead might themsel…
Bhagat Singh's Corpse
This article explores how a sense of responsibility toward the revolutionary Bhagat Singh (1907-1931) is mediated by and articulated through a relationship with the martyr’s written remains. It considers how efforts to reconstruct the ‘real’ Bhagat Singh propel a polemic around the ‘proper’ subject of Indian politics, one that destabilizes common sense nationalist narratives and extant autobiographies of the Indian left. These interventions must,…
History in Pakistan and the Will to Architecture
This essay serves as both an introduction to the themed section and a provocation regarding a possible agenda for the anthropology of history in Pakistan. It considers the implications of Faisal Devji's argument that unity in Pakistan was originally pursued through a rejection of history, suggesting that attempts to identify an inheritance—to articulate the form and nature of a responsibility to the past—have proved intellectually and politically…
Building, Dwelling, Dying: Architecture and History in Pakistan
There is a long history of scholars finding in architecture tools for thinking, whether this is the relationship between nature and culture in Simmel's ruins, industrial capitalism in Benjamin's Parisian arcades, or the rhythms of the primordial in Heidegger's Black Forest farmhouse. But what does it mean to take seriously the concepts and dispositions articulated by architects themselves? How might processes of designing and making constitute pa…
On the Form, Politics and Effects of Writing Revolution
peerreview_statement: The publishing and review policy for this title is described in its Aims & Scope. aims_and_scope_url: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=csas20
"Against "Cultures of Hiatus
This essay examines the relationship between a radical politics and the institution of the archive through a history of the George Padmore Institute (GPI), a community archive attached to New Beacon Books in London. Focusing on the life and thought of John La Rose (1927–2006)—Trinidadian poet, publisher, activist, and founder of the institute—the essay explores how a politics of hope is articulated in relation to competing priorities of “foundati…
Experiments in political truth
This article begins with that classic question of revolutionary politics: ‘What is to be done?’ Its concern is not, however, the provision of a coherent answer, nor the designation of a future to be reached. It traces instead the spirit of asking – the call to critically engage the present as a platform for action. This is to understand politics as active thought: as an art or craft rather than the mastery of certain theories. A responsive, inter…
On the Form, Politics and Effects of Writing Revolution
peerreview_statement: The publishing and review policy for this title is described in its Aims & Scope. aims_and_scope_url: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=csas20
Bhagat Singh's Corpse
This article explores how a sense of responsibility toward the revolutionary Bhagat Singh (1907-1931) is mediated by and articulated through a relationship with the martyr’s written remains. It considers how efforts to reconstruct the ‘real’ Bhagat Singh propel a polemic around the ‘proper’ subject of Indian politics, one that destabilizes common sense nationalist narratives and extant autobiographies of the Indian left. These interventions must,…
The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and his Empire of Truth by Dipesh Chakrabarty
Reviewed by: The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and his Empire of Truth by Dipesh Chakrabarty Chris Moffat The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and his Empire of Truth By Dipesh Chakrabarty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. At the end of his new book, The Calling of History, Dipesh Chakrabarty announces an impressive aptitude for the art of necromancy. Entering the corridors of 10 Lake Terrace, Calcutta, he successfully…
India's Revolutionary Inheritance: Politics and the Promise of Bhagat Singh
What do anti-colonial histories mean for politics in contemporary India? How can we understand a political terrain that appears crowded with the dead, heroic figures from past struggles who call the living to account and demand action? What role do these 'afterlives' play in the inauguration of new politics and the fashioning of possible futures? In this engaging and innovative analysis of anti-colonial afterlives in modern South Asia, Chris Moff…
"Against "Cultures of Hiatus
This essay examines the relationship between a radical politics and the institution of the archive through a history of the George Padmore Institute (GPI), a community archive attached to New Beacon Books in London. Focusing on the life and thought of John La Rose (1927–2006)—Trinidadian poet, publisher, activist, and founder of the institute—the essay explores how a politics of hope is articulated in relation to competing priorities of “foundati…
Politics and the Work of the Dead in Modern India
This article provides a framework for understanding the continuing political potential of the anticolonial dead in twenty-first-century India. It demonstrates how scholars might move beyond histories of reception to interrogate the force of inheritance in contemporary political life. Rather than the willful conjuring of the dead by the living, for a politics in the present, it considers the more provocative possibility that the dead might themsel…
History in Pakistan and the Will to Architecture
This essay serves as both an introduction to the themed section and a provocation regarding a possible agenda for the anthropology of history in Pakistan. It considers the implications of Faisal Devji's argument that unity in Pakistan was originally pursued through a rejection of history, suggesting that attempts to identify an inheritance—to articulate the form and nature of a responsibility to the past—have proved intellectually and politically…
Building, Dwelling, Dying: Architecture and History in Pakistan
There is a long history of scholars finding in architecture tools for thinking, whether this is the relationship between nature and culture in Simmel's ruins, industrial capitalism in Benjamin's Parisian arcades, or the rhythms of the primordial in Heidegger's Black Forest farmhouse. But what does it mean to take seriously the concepts and dispositions articulated by architects themselves? How might processes of designing and making constitute pa…
The Itinerant Library of Lala Lajpat Rai
This essay traces the movements of a library from New York to Lahore in the wake of the First World War and then to Shimla and Chandigarh following the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. It explores how this collection of books, assembled by the anti-colonial nationalist Lajpat Rai (1865-1928), intersected with and informed key moments of political struggle in twentieth-century urban America and colonial India. The essay then considers…
In the Bargain Bin
Lahore After the Modern: Architecture, Equality and Community in Yasmeen Lari’s Anguri Bagh
The problem of home was, in a sense, the founding problem of Pakistan: first, in the call for a new ‘homeland’ for South Asia’s Muslims, but also because its creation provoked displacement and a condition of homelessness. The population transfers and refugee camps that accompanied the 1947 partition of India were succeeded by housing crises prompted by industrialisation and urbanization. Debates over the responsibility of government authorities t…
S uchetana C hattopadhyay . Voices of Komagata Maru: Imperial Surveillance and Workers from Punjab in Bengal
I first glimpsed the Komagata Maru as an undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo. It was pictured on the opening slide for a first-year Introduction to Politics lecture, and the professor’s aim was to shake the assembled audience of young Canadians out of the comfortable certainties and easy patriotisms enshrined in high school civics lessons. Here, in Vancouver, in May 1914, immigration officials refused to allow the Komagata Maru, a…
Ranajit Guha's Garden: Ranajit Guha (1923-2023)
Towards Peoples' Histories in Pakistan: (In)audible Voices, Forgotten Pasts
What would Walter Benjamin have made of Pakistan? One might imagine the German critic, a famous collector, in one of Saddar's busy bazaars, his arms full of handicrafts and other souvenirs. We know from Benjamin's archives that he regularly sent postcards—would he be drawn to purchase images of Mazaar-e-Quaid? Mohenjodaro? Shahi Qila? Would the shopping malls of Islamabad prompt any comparisons to the Parisian arcades to which he devoted so much …
Law (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Political science (11 works) · History (10 works) · Politics (10 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Art (6 works) · History (6 works)