The Crises of Civilization: Exploring Global and Planetary Histories

by Dipesh Chakrabarty

Societies that have long wrestled with the legacies of colonialism now confront both a crisis of globalization and a crisis of climate. This collection of essays by a leading scholar of postcolonial studies and environmental humanities examines these distinct - but interrelated - crises side by side. The first series of essays, 'Global Worlds', details how varied ideas of civilization and humanism have shaped ideas about a global humanity in the lingering twilight of the European empires - and outlines the conflicts and connections that arise from global encounters in our postcolonial age. The essays of 'The Planetary Human' explore the significance of planetary climate change for humanistic and postcolonial thought. The crisis of climate change demands not only critiques of capitalism and inequality, but also new thinking about the human species as a whole -- and about our patterns of justice, our writing of history, and our relationship with nature in the age of the Anthropocene.

Genres: History

321 pages, Hardcover

Published April 28, 2019

About the author

Dipesh Chakrabarty (b. 1948) is a Bengali historian who has also made contributions to postcolonial theory and subaltern studies.

He attended Presidency College of the University of Calcutta, where he received his undergraduate degree in physics. He also received a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (MBA) from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. Later he moved on to the Australian National University in Canberra, from where he earned a PhD in history.

He is currently the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations and the College at the University of Chicago. He was a visiting faculty at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Chakrabarty also serves as a contributing editor for Public Culture, an academic journal published by Duke University Press.

He was a member of the Subaltern Studies collective. He has recently made important contributions to the intersections between history and postcolonial theory (Provincializing Europe [PE]), which continues and revises his earlier historical work on working-class history in Bengal (Rethinking Working-Class History). PE adds considerably to the debate of how postcolonial discourse engages in the writing of history (e.g., Robert J. C. Young's "White Mythologies"), critiquing historicism, which is intimately related to the West's notion of linear time. Chakrabarty argues that Western historiography's historicism universalizes liberalism, projecting it to all ends of the map. He suggests that, under the rubric of historicism, the end-goal of every society is to develop towards nationalism.

In 2011 he received an Honorary degree from the University of Antwerp.