Roundtable "Forces of History" with Dipesh Chakrabarty, Alyssa Battistoni, Massimiliano Tomba, Lillian Cicerchia, Maeve Cooke, Rahel Jaeggi and Robin Celikates

What does Marx’s famous claim in the opening pages of 18^th Brumaire  –  that “human beings make their own history” – mean today, in light of planetary limits and looming ecological catastrophes? The public roundtable of this year’s International Critical Theory Summer School provides an opportunity to discuss different approaches to history and historical agency from a materialist perspective. The discussion will focus on ecological and other non-human forces in history and ask: What consequences do they have for our understanding of history and emancipation? Does the recognition of non-human forces as historical agents entail a fragmentation of history into a plurality of histories? And how does a planetary reframing of history affect the relationship between subaltern histories and the idea of universal history?