L'avvento della pandemia da Coronavirus rappresenta per l'umanità una sfida duplice: da un lato vivere sapendo che è necessario riequilibrare la nostra presenza e il nostro impatto sulla Terra, dall'altro riflettere su come fattori economici e sociali, oltre a quelli biologici, abbiano influito sulla diffusione globale della malattia. Secondo i virologi, la maggior parte delle nuove malattie infettive – circa il 60% – ha origine in un salto di specie di virus o batteri che passano dal corp...

El advenimiento del Atropoceno no sólo ha puesto en jaque a la humanidad y al clima, sino también las categorías que hasta ahora hemos utilizado para dar cuenta de nuestra situación y del lugar que ocupamos en el planeta. Lo humano, que hasta ahora había centrado toda forma de pensamiento, se encuentra de repente imbricado en un sinfín de procesos planetarios que lo desplazan y lo transforman, al tiempo que la cronología limitada propia de los asuntos humanos se ve empequeñecida ante la ma...

First published in 2000, Dipesh Chakrabarty's influential Provincializing Europe addresses the mythical figure of Europe that is often taken to be the original site of modernity in many histories of capitalist transition in non-Western countries. This imaginary Europe, Dipesh Chakrabarty argues, is built into the social sciences. The very idea of historicizing carries with it some peculiarly European assumptions about disenchanted space, secular time, and sovereignty. Measured aga...

I due saggi di Dipesh Chakrabarty raccolti in questo volume sono stati, come scrivono i curatori Matteo De Giuli e Nicolò Porcelluzzi nell'appassionata introduzione, un punto di riferimento essenziale per il confronto tra le scienze umane e quello che, con urgenza sempre crescente, i geologi e altri scienziati della natura hanno definito Antropocene: l'epoca segnata dalla drammatica "impronta ecologica" degli umani – divenuti "potenza geologica" – sul pianeta. La crisi antropogenica del si...

A leading scholar in early twentieth-century India, Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958) was knighted in 1929 and became the first Indian historian to gain honorary membership in the American Historical Association. By the end of his lifetime, however, he had been marginalized by the Indian history establishment, as postcolonial historians embraced alternative approaches in the name of democracy and anti-colonialism. The Calling of History examines Sarkar's career—and poignant obsolesc...

As mudanças climáticas colocam em xeque nosso futuro, mas também nossos modos de narrar a história. Em O global e o planetário, Dipesh Chakrabarty argumenta que a era do Antropoceno exige um novo enquadramento historiográfico: em vez de pensar o mundo apenas a partir da globalização e das interações humanas, é necessário considerar a Terra como um sistema vivo, com processos próprios que moldam e são moldados pela humanidade. Ao traçar a distinção entre o "global" – conceito historicamente...

Comment prendre intellectuellement la mesure de l'Anthropocène et de ses conséquences ?Une porte d'entrée à la pensée d'un historien majeur de notre époque.Avec l'Anthropocène, l'humanité est devenue une force géophysique. L'histoire " humaine " et l'histoire " naturelle " apparaissent ainsi désormais plus que jamais intriquées. Mais comment articuler histoire globale (celle de l'humanité) et histoire planétaire (celle de notre Terre) ?La part des responsabilités et d...

The world created by the legacies of empire and colonialism now confronts some deep crises of civility, precipitated by globalization and climate change. In this volume, Dipesh Chakrabarty examines these distinct—but interrelated—issues side by side. Varied ideas of civilization and humanism have shaped notions of a global humanity in the lingering twilight of the European empires. Detailing these ideas, in the section titled ‘Global Worlds’, Chakrabarty outlines the conflicts and connecti...

Over the last four decades, Dipesh Chakrabarty’s astonishingly wide-ranging scholarship has elaborated a range of important issues, especially those of modernity, identity, and politics – in dialogue with postcolonial theory and critical historiography – on global and planetary scales. All of this makes Chakrabarty among the most significant (and most cited) scholars working in the humanities and social sciences today. The present text comprises substantive yet short, academic yet accessib...

Dipesh Chakrabarty and Ranajit Das Gupta’s Some Aspects of the Labour History of Bengal in the Nineteenth Century presents a sharply posed conversation between them in October 1981 on working-class consciousness in Bengal. The arguments posited here show that rather than being a direct, mechanical outcome of the capitalistic mode of production, working class consciousness is a process. Asking questions about the morality of labour, history of peasant revolts, capitalist intervention, and s...

Postcolonial approaches to understanding economies are of increasing academic and political significance as questions about the nature of globalisation, transnational flows of capital and workers and the making and re-making of territorial borders assume centre stage in debates about contemporary economies and policy.Despite the growing academic and political urgency in understanding how 'other' cultures encounter 'the west', economics-oriented approaches within social sciences hav...

A historian offers a unique look at the pandemic, climate change, and the human versus nonhuman.Climate change represents a deep conundrum for humans. It is difficult for humans to give up the unequal and yet accelerating pursuit of a good life based on an insatiable appetite for energy sourced mainly from fossil fuel. But the same pursuit, scientists insist, damages the geobiological system that supports the existence of interrelated forms of life, including ours,...