Dr. Raquel Varela, Peoples History: History and Memory | lecture and discussion
Dr. Varela wants to defend a key idea: social history, the history of those below, or of the people´s history, is not the history of a part of the population or of a specific theme, as would be the history of ideas and mentalities, of eating habits, or military history or - one that has been dominant in our midst since the 1980s, and the entry into the period of sharp decline of global capitalism, neoliberalism - political and institutional history. We went from kings and lords, under the influence of resistance to Nazi-fascism and anti-colonial revolutions, to a diffusion of social history in the 1970s. And to a history, after 1986-89, of States and structures, that is, institutions. The history of the people is history, this is the central argument of her text. When we do this, we mobilize not only those who work and social dynamics as subjects, we summon the core of what is central to explaining human societies and, even, humanity.
Social history - which we sought to do in the Peoples History of Europe or the Peoples History of the Carnation Revolution and in our recent Peoples History of Portugal - allows us to climb to the top of the mountain and, from there, see the horizon line. It places us in a place that allows us to understand different societies not in their appearance (mercantile exchange, money-form, “things” etc.) or in their figuration (parties, Church, leaderships etc.), but in their essence - everything. What is produced in society comes from work and only work produces value. And work, in actually existing capitalism, is not a contractual arrangement signed between free people, this is just its formal legal representation, but a social relationship between different social classes: the bourgeoisie and the workers. These classes are not the only ones that exist, but they are, after being consolidated in the contemporary period of advanced capitalism, those that determine the entire social structure in which we work and, therefore, the entire way of thinking, feeling and living life. The history of work and its world is not the history of workers, it is, in fact, the history of society as a whole.
About the speakers:
Raquel Varela is a labour historian, researcher and Professor at New University of Lisbon, and Honorary Fellow at the International Institute for Social History. She is also president of the International Association of Strikes and Social Conflicts and co-editor of its journal. She is the author of A People's History of the Portuguese Revolution (Pluto, 2018). Her book A People's History of Europe:
From World War I to Today (2021) tells the story of the last hundred years of a very old continent and the ordinary people that shaped the events that defined it from World War I to today.
Jakub Muchowski is an adjunct professor at the Department of History of Jagiellonian University. His research focuses on the theory of historical writing, Polish memory cultures, transnational history of Poland and labour history. He has authored a book Polityka pisarstwa historycznego (Politics of Historical Writing, 2015) and articles in journals including Journal of the Philosophy of History, International Journal of Heritage Studies and Historyka.