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In The Southern Question, Jordan T. Camp considers the challenges of organizing against rising fascism. He turns to Antonio Gramsci’s 1926 essay, “Some Aspects of the Southern Question” to do so. The essay compels organizers to overcome divisions and forge alliances across spaces of difference. Before it was ever published, Gramsci was arrested and confined to a fascist prison. A century later, Camp revisits his theory of alliance building across spaces of uneven capitalist development. He expands Gramsci’s insights into different souths, including the Jim Crow American South, apartheid South Africa, and the neocolonial Caribbean. In each site, he centers radical theorists such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Angela Y. Davis, Ruth First, and Stuart Hall. Drawing on their political writings as well as extensive archival research, he “translates” the southern question into different spaces and contexts. In doing so, the book locates the roots of authoritarian and fascist political projects within the historical geography of racist and colonial capitalisms. Most significantly, Camp demonstrates the implications of translating anti-fascist theories into practice for the present conjuncture.
Jordan T. Camp is Associate Professor of American Studies and Urban Studies and founding Co-Director of the Trinity Social Justice Institute at Trinity College, author of Incarcerating the Crisis, co-editor of Policing the Planet, and co-host of the Conjuncture podcast.