Gary Wilder
Biographic Data
| ID | 444882 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gary Wilder |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gary |
| FAMILY NAME | Wilder |
| SIGNATURE | WILDER G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Pomona College |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 93 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Populism as Liberal Alibi: Recalling Stuart Hall’s Analysis of Thatcherism
This paper criticizes liberal discourse, both in the media and among scholars, that does not attend to the systemic relationship between left liberalism and authoritarian populism. Because these commentators do not recognize this link, they argue that populism can be combated only with more liberalism. Likewise, I criticize this discourse for establishing a false equivalence between far-right forms of authoritarian populism and left-of-center for…
Cover of Concrete Utopianism: The Politics of Temporality and Solidarity , with art by Dan Perjovschi
Research Article| March 01 2024 Cover of Concrete Utopianism: The Politics of Temporality and Solidarity, with art by Dan Perjovschi Gary Wilder Gary Wilder Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Social Text (2024) 42 (1 (158)): 103. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-10959689 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon …
From Image to Flesh in a World Seen from the South
This interview with the intellectual historian Gary Wilder explores the philosophical and methodological theses in his overall work, particularly focusing on his 2022 book Concrete Utopianism. The conversation explores such themes as relationships among solidarity, filiality, and freedom; the forces and fears of normative claims; the definition of an image; and the place of the flesh in a critical Marxism, among others. This is the second convers…
Concrete Utopianism: The Politics of Temporality and Solidarity
Concrete Utopianism: The Politics of Temporality and Solidarity
Through a critique of Left realism, culturalism, and pessimism from the standpoint of heterodox Marxism and Black radicalism, this book insists that we place questions of solidarity and temporality, critical internationalism and concrete utopianism at the center of Left political thinking. The author makes a bold case for embracing a politics of the possible-impossible adequate to current planetary challenges.
Concrete Utopianism: The Politics of Temporality and Solidarity
Never before has it been more important for Left thinking to champion expansive visions for societal transformation. Yet influential currents of critical theory have lost sight of this political imperative. Provincial notions of places, periods, and subjects obstruct our capacity to invent new alignments and envision a world we wish to see. Political imagination is misread as optimism. Utopianism is conflated with idealism. Revolutionary traditio…
Thinking with Balibar: A Lexicon of Conceptual Practice
Theses on Theory and History
Sing Clio, daughter of Zeus, Theory’s rage at the violations of your charge. You, who told Hesiod, “We know how to speak false things that seem true, but we know when we will, to utter true things.”Now is the time to utter true things, for Theory has been dishonored in your house, displaced by empires of empiricism, fetishism of archives, dictates of discipline, enforcement of orthodoxy, and impotent storytelling.Without Theory, History is naught…
The Fernando Coronil Reader: The Struggle for Life Is the Matter
Fernando Coronil Reader: The Struggle for Life Is the Matter
The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present
This volume invokes the “postcolonial contemporary” in order to recognize and reflect upon the emphatically postcolonial character of the contemporary conjuncture, as well as to inquire into whether postcolonial criticism can adequately grasp it. Neither simply for nor against postcolonialism, the volume seeks to cut across this false alternative, and to think with postcolonial theory about political contemporaneity. Many of the most influential …
The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present
Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present
Colonial ethnology and political rationality in French West Africa
Before the 1970s, Anglo-American anthropology was in certain respects unwilling to confront the colonial genealogies of its own privileged categories and canonical works. However, French colonial administrators and ethnologists in the early twentieth century were frank and unapologetic about their mutual implication. This chapter explores the circular and mutually reinforcing dynamics between professional anthropology and new technologies of admi…
Making Freedom Time
Research Article| April 01 2017 Making Freedom Time Gary Wilder Gary Wilder Gary Wilder is a Professor in the Ph.D. Programs of Anthropology, History, and French and Director of the Committee on Globalization and Social Change at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Duke University Press, 2015) and The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritu…
Decolonising the Intellectual: Politics, Culture and Humanism at the End of the French Empire, written by Jane Hiddleston
Here/Hear Now Aimé Césaire
This essay focuses on how Aimé Césaire's postwar confrontation with the problem of colonial emancipation may speak directly to our current political and theoretical impasses, especially regarding alternative (nonliberal) forms of humanism and cosmopolitanism. By pursuing alternative forms of decolonization that would enable self-determination without state sovereignty, Césaire challenged the territorial and national assumptions that typically gov…
Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World
Freedom Time reconsiders decolonization from the perspectives of Aimé Césaire (Martinique) and Léopold Sédar Senghor (Senegal) who, beginning in 1945, promoted self-determination without state sovereignty. As politicians, public intellectuals, and poets they struggled to transform imperial France into a democratic federation, with former colonies as autonomous members of a transcontinental polity. In so doing, they revitalized past but unrealized…
Emmanuelle Saada. Empire's Children: Race, Filiation, and Citizenship in the French Colonies
Journal Article Emmanuelle Saada. Empire's Children: Race, Filiation, and Citizenship in the French Colonies Get access Emmanuelle Saada. Empire's Children: Race, Filiation, and Citizenship in the French Colonies. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2012. Pp. xv, 339. Cloth $81.00, paper $27.50, e-book $27.50. Gary Wilder Gary Wilder The Graduate Center, City University of New York Search for other works by this…
Telling Histories: A Conversation with Laurent Dubois and Greg Grandin
When an earthquake devastated the area around the Haitian capital city in January 2010, Laurent Dubois, a historian of Haiti working in the United States, was struck by the extent of the general ignorance about Haiti in the United States, and at the same time, at least for some, the curiosity to learn more about it. Inspired by his conversations with colleagues, journalists, and the general public, he authored a scholarly book that examined Haiti…
Eurafrique as the Future Past of “Black France”: Sarkozy’s Temporal Confusion and Senghor’s Postwar Vision
From Optic to Topic: The Foreclosure Effect of Historiographic Turns
Untimely Vision: Aimé Césaire, Decolonization, Utopia
This essay focuses on Aimé Césaire's post-World War II commitment to colonial emancipation without national independence. It examines how his constitutional initiatives to enact a future with France in an age of decolonization may be read as politically untimely and strategic utopian engagements with the complex problem of freedom. It suggests that they can be grasped as such only if we recognize that Césaire's 1946 program to transform Antillean…
Aimé Césaire: Contra Commemoration
The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars
Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World
Freedom Time reconsiders decolonization from the perspectives of Aimé Césaire (Martinique) and Léopold Sédar Senghor (Senegal) who, beginning in 1945, promoted self-determination without state sovereignty. As politicians, public intellectuals, and poets they struggled to transform imperial France into a democratic federation, with former colonies as autonomous members of a transcontinental polity. In so doing, they revitalized past but unrealized…
Untimely Vision: Aimé Césaire, Decolonization, Utopia
This essay focuses on Aimé Césaire's post-World War II commitment to colonial emancipation without national independence. It examines how his constitutional initiatives to enact a future with France in an age of decolonization may be read as politically untimely and strategic utopian engagements with the complex problem of freedom. It suggests that they can be grasped as such only if we recognize that Césaire's 1946 program to transform Antillean…
Colonial ethnology and political rationality in french west Africa
This article explores the circular and mutually reinforcing relationship between professional anthropology and new technologies of administration that emerged after the First World War in French West Africa. Local administrators wrote fieldwork monographs that were formative for metropolitan science, while new native policies concerned with protecting yet improving indigenous social institutions incorporated the methods and insights of profession…
Framing Greater France Between The Wars
This essay analyzes the relationship between France as an imperial nation-state and the discourse of Greater France that intensified during the interwar period. I am interested in the way that the figure of Greater France sought to stage and reconcile - not justify, rationalize, or mystify - structural contradictions between republican and imperial systems of government. I argue that there is an intrinsic relationship between colonial discourse a…
Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics during the Decolonization of Algeria
Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics during the Decolonization of Algeria. James D. Le Sueur Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. ix. 342 pp., notes, bibliography, index
Race, Reason, Impasse: Césaire, Fanon, and the Legacy of Emancipation
Research Article| October 01 2004 Race, Reason, Impasse: Césaire, Fanon, and the Legacy of Emancipation Gary Wilder Gary Wilder Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Radical History Review (2004) 2004 (90): 31–61. https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-2004-90-31 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Gary Wilder; Race, Reason, Impasse: Césaire, Fanon, and the Legacy of Emancipation. Radical Histor…
Theses on Theory and History
Sing Clio, daughter of Zeus, Theory’s rage at the violations of your charge. You, who told Hesiod, “We know how to speak false things that seem true, but we know when we will, to utter true things.”Now is the time to utter true things, for Theory has been dishonored in your house, displaced by empires of empiricism, fetishism of archives, dictates of discipline, enforcement of orthodoxy, and impotent storytelling.Without Theory, History is naught…
Aimé Césaire: Contra Commemoration
Framing Greater France Between The Wars
This essay analyzes the relationship between France as an imperial nation-state and the discourse of Greater France that intensified during the interwar period. I am interested in the way that the figure of Greater France sought to stage and reconcile - not justify, rationalize, or mystify - structural contradictions between republican and imperial systems of government. I argue that there is an intrinsic relationship between colonial discourse a…
Panafricanism and the Republican Political Sphere
Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics during the Decolonization of Algeria
Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics during the Decolonization of Algeria. James D. Le Sueur Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. ix. 342 pp., notes, bibliography, index
Colonial ethnology and political rationality in french west Africa
This article explores the circular and mutually reinforcing relationship between professional anthropology and new technologies of administration that emerged after the First World War in French West Africa. Local administrators wrote fieldwork monographs that were formative for metropolitan science, while new native policies concerned with protecting yet improving indigenous social institutions incorporated the methods and insights of profession…
Race, Reason, Impasse: Césaire, Fanon, and the Legacy of Emancipation
Research Article| October 01 2004 Race, Reason, Impasse: Césaire, Fanon, and the Legacy of Emancipation Gary Wilder Gary Wilder Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Radical History Review (2004) 2004 (90): 31–61. https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-2004-90-31 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Gary Wilder; Race, Reason, Impasse: Césaire, Fanon, and the Legacy of Emancipation. Radical Histor…
The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars
Aimé Césaire: Contra Commemoration
Untimely Vision: Aimé Césaire, Decolonization, Utopia
This essay focuses on Aimé Césaire's post-World War II commitment to colonial emancipation without national independence. It examines how his constitutional initiatives to enact a future with France in an age of decolonization may be read as politically untimely and strategic utopian engagements with the complex problem of freedom. It suggests that they can be grasped as such only if we recognize that Césaire's 1946 program to transform Antillean…
Eurafrique as the Future Past of “Black France”: Sarkozy’s Temporal Confusion and Senghor’s Postwar Vision
From Optic to Topic: The Foreclosure Effect of Historiographic Turns
Emmanuelle Saada. Empire's Children: Race, Filiation, and Citizenship in the French Colonies
Journal Article Emmanuelle Saada. Empire's Children: Race, Filiation, and Citizenship in the French Colonies Get access Emmanuelle Saada. Empire's Children: Race, Filiation, and Citizenship in the French Colonies. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2012. Pp. xv, 339. Cloth $81.00, paper $27.50, e-book $27.50. Gary Wilder Gary Wilder The Graduate Center, City University of New York Search for other works by this…
Telling Histories: A Conversation with Laurent Dubois and Greg Grandin
When an earthquake devastated the area around the Haitian capital city in January 2010, Laurent Dubois, a historian of Haiti working in the United States, was struck by the extent of the general ignorance about Haiti in the United States, and at the same time, at least for some, the curiosity to learn more about it. Inspired by his conversations with colleagues, journalists, and the general public, he authored a scholarly book that examined Haiti…
Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World
Freedom Time reconsiders decolonization from the perspectives of Aimé Césaire (Martinique) and Léopold Sédar Senghor (Senegal) who, beginning in 1945, promoted self-determination without state sovereignty. As politicians, public intellectuals, and poets they struggled to transform imperial France into a democratic federation, with former colonies as autonomous members of a transcontinental polity. In so doing, they revitalized past but unrealized…
Decolonising the Intellectual: Politics, Culture and Humanism at the End of the French Empire, written by Jane Hiddleston
Here/Hear Now Aimé Césaire
This essay focuses on how Aimé Césaire's postwar confrontation with the problem of colonial emancipation may speak directly to our current political and theoretical impasses, especially regarding alternative (nonliberal) forms of humanism and cosmopolitanism. By pursuing alternative forms of decolonization that would enable self-determination without state sovereignty, Césaire challenged the territorial and national assumptions that typically gov…
Colonial ethnology and political rationality in French West Africa
Before the 1970s, Anglo-American anthropology was in certain respects unwilling to confront the colonial genealogies of its own privileged categories and canonical works. However, French colonial administrators and ethnologists in the early twentieth century were frank and unapologetic about their mutual implication. This chapter explores the circular and mutually reinforcing dynamics between professional anthropology and new technologies of admi…
Making Freedom Time
Research Article| April 01 2017 Making Freedom Time Gary Wilder Gary Wilder Gary Wilder is a Professor in the Ph.D. Programs of Anthropology, History, and French and Director of the Committee on Globalization and Social Change at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Duke University Press, 2015) and The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritu…
The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present
This volume invokes the “postcolonial contemporary” in order to recognize and reflect upon the emphatically postcolonial character of the contemporary conjuncture, as well as to inquire into whether postcolonial criticism can adequately grasp it. Neither simply for nor against postcolonialism, the volume seeks to cut across this false alternative, and to think with postcolonial theory about political contemporaneity. Many of the most influential …
The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present
Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present
The Fernando Coronil Reader: The Struggle for Life Is the Matter
Fernando Coronil Reader: The Struggle for Life Is the Matter
Thinking with Balibar: A Lexicon of Conceptual Practice
Theses on Theory and History
Sing Clio, daughter of Zeus, Theory’s rage at the violations of your charge. You, who told Hesiod, “We know how to speak false things that seem true, but we know when we will, to utter true things.”Now is the time to utter true things, for Theory has been dishonored in your house, displaced by empires of empiricism, fetishism of archives, dictates of discipline, enforcement of orthodoxy, and impotent storytelling.Without Theory, History is naught…
Concrete Utopianism: The Politics of Temporality and Solidarity
Sociology (18 works) · Political science (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Politics (16 works) · Art (11 works) · History (11 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis (6 works)