Empire’s Endgame: Racism and the British State (a close reading group)

Join us as we do a close reading of an innovative work by eight activist scholars who collaborate to bring us a powerful intervention in debates surrounding racial capitalism and political crisis in contemporary Britain. Discussions of racism too often focus on individual behaviors and prejudices, but Empire’s Endgame maps the complex relations between empire, racist culture, political economy, and the practices of a security-oriented state seeking legitimacy in times of unbearable economic uncertainty. While the book’s story unfolds in Britain, its lessons and warnings may well apply to the United States and many other crisis-ridden imperialist polities.

The activist scholars who have contributed to Empire’s Endgame are Gargi Bhattacharyya, Professor of Sociology, University of East London and author of Rethinking Racial Capitalism (2018), Dangerous Brown Men (2008) and Traffick (2005). Adam Elliott-Cooper is Research Associate in Social Sciences at Greenwich University (UK) and author of Black Resistance to British Policing (2021). Sita Balani is Lecturer in Contemporary Literature and Culture at King’s College, London and author of Deadly and Slick: How Sex Makes Race in Postcolonial Britain (2021). Kerem Nisancioglu is Lecturer in International Relations at SOAS, University of London, co-author of How the West Came to Rule (2015) and co-editor of Decolonising the University (2018). Kojo Koram is Lecturer at School of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London and editor of The War on Drugs and the Global Color Line (2019). Dalia Gebrial is editor of a Historical Materialism special issue on identity politics and co-editor of Decolonising the University (2017), Nadine El-Enany is Reader in Law at Birkbeck School of Law and has written (B)ordering Brtain: Law, Race and Empire (2020), and  Luke de Noronha, Lecturer at University College London and has written Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of Deportation to Jamaica (2020).

The tickets with class and book include shipping costs via Media Mail. The class and book offers are only good for orders in the US and Puerto Rico.

The CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting for more than four years. We are a group of workers, students, activists and teachers who completed a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital, and will begin a new close reading group on the Grundrisse this April.