This paper analyzes Althusser's proposal for an aleatory materialism through his engagement with historical materialism, and particularly with Marx on "primitive accumulation." It identifies two different legacies of Marx's reflections on the origins of capitalism and discusses how Althusser attempted to rework Marx to reach a non-teleological conception of history. At the same time, […]

"The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt - Empire, Disease, and Modernity In French Colonial Vietnam" The History Department Presents Michael Vann Professor of History at Sacramento State University and UCSC History graduate program alum

Sandy Chung (UC Santa Cruz) presents The Ingredients of Control in Chamorro. About eight times each year, the department hosts colloquia by distinguished faculty from around the world. For more information: https://linguistics.ucsc.edu/news-events/colloquia/index.html

  In this paper, “‘I am he:' Revising the Theory of Dispossession from Colonial Yucatán,” I examine a legal case involving an enslaved Afro-diasporan named Juan Patricio and a Mayan woman named Fabiana Pech from turn-of-the-eighteenth-century Yucatán. The case challenges a fundamental presupposition of many contemporary theories of dispossession: namely, that the dispossessed had prior possession […]