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Intellectual History Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Intellectual History

Esmonde Higgins - Politics As Intellectual Practice, Terry Irving Dec 1997

Esmonde Higgins - Politics As Intellectual Practice, Terry Irving

Terry Irving

This chapter traces Esmonde Higgins' struggle to define his intellectual practice from 1919 to 1954, using his private correspondence and his published writings. It divides his reflections into three parts: alienation, practice, and contradictory aspects of practice.It describes his route from Communist bureaucratic practice to having conversations 'about human interests' with workers as equals in adult education classes and informal domestic gatherings.


Challenges To Labour History, Terry Irving Dec 1993

Challenges To Labour History, Terry Irving

Terry Irving

The decline of the labour movement in the 1980s and 1990s robbed labour history of its elan as 'history with a social purpose', and the rise of postmodernism devalued the attempt by labour historians to grasp social reality as a whole. Today there is a commonly expressed feeling that labour history is experiencing a crisis. The first three essays in this volume are historiographical; then four essays engage with the challenges posed by post-modernism and cultural theory; and finally four essays present examples of the ways in which theoretical reappraisals can shape the writing of labour history.