Author: dereksayer

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Blackwell issued a 2nd edition of The Great Arch in 1991, six years after the original publication, for which Philip Corrigan and I wrote a postscript discussing new work on English state formation published since 1985, and responding to various reviews of the book.  Both entailed some clarification and extension of its arguments. The 2nd edition had a very small print-run and soon went out of print, so this text is little known.

The excellent cover illustration is from Lyubov Popova’s set for The Earth in Turmoil (1923).  I have posted a downloadable scan of the postscript here for anyone interested.

GA 2d ed cover

 

There was also a Spanish translation of the Introduction and Afterthoughts sections of The Great Arch, in Antropología del Estado: Dominación y prácticas contestatarias en América Latina, ed. María L. Lagos and Pamela Calla, Cuaderno de Futuro Nº 23, La Paz (Bolivia): Hernando Calla, 2007, pp. 39-116.  A pdf can be downloaded free here.

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Earlier this year New Perspectives published an updated version of a paper I had been working on—on and off—for more than a decade, in which I tried to re-examine some of the arguments about English state formation presentein my 1985 book with Philip Corrigan, The Great Arch, in light of my later work on Czech history in my Prague Trilogy.

Abstract

Considering the differences between the superficial orderliness of the English/British table of royal succession and the apparent anarchy of its Bohemian counterpart, this essay questions aspects of the analysis of English state formation offered in Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer’s 1985 study The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution. Rather than providing a contrast to England’s institutional political continuities over centuries, Bohemia’s manifestly fractured history furnishes a vantage point from which the ideological character of such claimed historical continuities becomes clear.  E. P. Thompson’s image of a “great arch” of state formation attributes far too much shape, solidity, and coherence to a process that was always, whether in England or Bohemia, a matter of flux and fluidity – a landscape in constant erosion, upon which coherence is only ever imposed in momentary retrospect.

New Perspectives has just made the text freely downloadable here.  I would welcome any comments.

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Benjamin Tallis and Derek Sayer

Czech PM-designate Andrej Babis (left) with Austrian People’s Party leader Sebastian Kurz. Wikimedia commons. 

 

The Iron Curtain may have been drawn back in 1989-1991, but you wouldn’t know it to read much of the commentary on the Czech parliamentary elections – and much recent commentary on ‘Eastern Europe’ more generally.

Much attention has been lavished on comparing Czech politician Andrej Babiš to Viktor Orban, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Donald Trump and, more plausibly, to Silvio Berlusconi, but this has obscured deeper problems in western analyses of the region. Many of the sins laid at the door of central and eastern Europeans are no less prevalent in western countries, but this is too often lost amidst enduring Cold War stereotypes.

In a recent Op-Ed typical of this trend, Jochen Bittner charged that across the Visegrad Group (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia), “leading politicians agitate against the European Union, portraying it as an imposing, undemocratic force.”

This is true. But populist politicians across western Europe portray the EU in exactly the same way. Marine Le Pen in France and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands both promised their electorate referendums on EU membership in hopes of emulating Brexit, whose champion was the anti-establishment politician and Donald Trump ally Nigel Farage …

 

Read full article in Open Democracy.

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For those interested, I have just posted the full text of my first book, Marx’s Method: Ideology, Science and Critique in Capital (1st edition, 1979) on academia.edu.  As with other out-of-print books I have posted on the same site (The Violence of Abstraction, and Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer, The Great Arch) it is selling for ridiculous prices second-hand.  All these texts can now be downloaded free of charge from academia.edu.

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Brexit is a portmanteau
word borrowed without asking
from the Greek for clusterfuck
like the Elgin Marbles

Brexit is my half-cut father
propping up the public bar
nothing against our colored cousins
so long as they stay where they are

Brexit is not hearing foreign languages on the High Street
Brexit is not hearing foreign languages on the bus
Brexit is not hearing foreign languages

again for ever and ever amen

Brexit is Morrissey
kissing Nigel Farage’s magnificent ass
Brexit is Johnny Rotten remembering he is
white working class

Brexit is the future fucked over
by a red white and blue

but mostly white

dream of the past

Keep Calm and
Carry On Up The Khyber
Pass

 

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I’m sorry I have been off here for a year.  I have been retiring (from full-time employment at a university), traveling, writing, and moving continents (from UK to Canada, where I am reacquainting myself with real winter in Calgary, Alberta).

If there is anybody still reading this blog, I’ve just posted a piece on academia.edu (whose final version will be published next month in the Journal of Historical Sociology) on Brexit and Trump.  Please publicize if you like it.

Here is the abstract:

Following the victories of the “Brexit” camp in the UK’s 2016 referendum and Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election, a new explanatory narrative rapidly established itself. According to this view, which has been widely accepted on both the political left and right, we are witnessing a popular revolt against “elites” spearheaded by white working-class “victims of globalization.” Drawing on extensive polling and census data, this paper debunks this new consensus as an artifact of post-factual politics driven by feeling rather than evidence. These were not instances of a “misshapen class struggle” that sometimes assumed racist or xenophobic forms, but centrally a race war on the non-native Other that has successfully managed to pass itself off as a revolt of the (white) deprived and dispossessed.

Here is the link:

https://www.academia.edu/31635901/White_Riot_Brexit_Trump_and_Post-Factual_Politics

 

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This is an Op-Ed piece I wrote for CEE New Perspectives, the companion blog of the academic journal New Perspectives which is published by the Institute of International Relations (IIR) in Prague.  I reproduce it here with permission.

http://ceenewperspectives.iir.cz/2016/01/08/prejudice-hysteria-and-a-failure-of-political-leadership-of-refugees-and-november-17-in-prague/

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Actually, my real album of the year was Butch Hancock’s The Wind’s Dominion, which was recorded back in 1979. I heard it for the first time only this year, after stumbling across an old vinyl copy in Reckless Records in Soho (London) and I couldn’t stop playing it.

I first came across Butch Hancock as one of the legendary West Texas band the Flatlanders along with Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmour, three high school buddies from Buddy Holly’s hometown of Lubbock, TX who headed to Austin to escape Jesus and Prohibition. Ely later toured with the Clash. We saw Joe touring with Terry Allen and Ryan Bingham at the New York City Winery a few years back, hunted down Jimmie Dale performing at Lucy’s Fried Chicken at SXSW 2014, and saw Butch hosting the annual Townes Van Zandt celebration at the Cactus Café in the Texas Union building at UT the same year.

Butch sang “The wind’s dominion” at Alejandro Escovedo’s “United Sounds of Austin” at the ACL Moody Theater on January 11, 2014. Joe Ely, Lucinda Williams, Rosie Flores, Terry Allen, Kimmie Rhodes, and “the situation we know as Roky Erickson” were among the many other contributors to an evening that showed why Austin bills itself as the world capital of live music.

“The Wind’s Dominion” album has been called “the West Texas Blonde on Blonde.” Enough said.

Unfortunately Hancock’s surreal masterpiece (check “Mario y Maria [cryin’ statues/spittin’ images]” or “Long road to Asia Minor”) can’t be included in my albums of the year because the qualification is that the album has to have been released—though not necessarily recorded—for the first time in 2015.  So here goes.  They’re all very good indeed.

 

 The top ten

1  Courtney Barnett—Sometimes I sit and think and sometimes I just sit

2  Benjamin Clementine—At least for now

3   Jason Isbell—Something more than free

4   Pops Staples—Don’t lose this

5   Bob Dylan—Shadows in the night

6   Titus Andronicus—The most lamentable tragedy

7   Kacey Musgraves—Pageant material

8   Ashley Monroe—The blade

9   Shovels and Rope—Busted jukebox volume 1

10   Sleater-Kinney—No cities to love

Honorable mentions

Keith Richards—Crosseyed heart

Iris Dement—The trackless woods

Drive By Truckers—Great to be alive!

 Neil Young and Bluenote Café

Kamasi Washington—The epic

Hors de concours

Bob Dylan—The cutting edge 1965-1966