Journal of the History of Ideas

Living the Law: An Interview with Jeanne-Marie Jackson by Tomi Onabanjo

Tomi Onabanjo interviews Jeanne-Marie Jackson about “The Letter of the Law in J. E. Casely Hayford’s West Africa,” her new book on the pan-Africanist and the relationship between ideas of the law, textuality, and comportment in colonial-era Ghana. @jmja.bsky.social @princetonupress.bsky.social

The Bookseller and the Buddha: Error, Empire, and the Problem of Origins by Bhadrajee Hewage

Today on the JHI Blog, Bhadrajee Hewage follows the nineteenth-century rise and fall of the “Ceylonese Buddha,” an English bookseller’s theory of the Buddha’s Sri Lankan origins—revealing a broader effort to naturalize history through geography by fixing living traditions to verifiable sites.

The Normativity of Marx’s Aristotelian-Hegelianism: An Interview with Michael Lazarus by Jackson Herndon

Jackson Herndon interviews Michael Lazarus about his book "Absolute Ethical Life." They discuss Marx's Aristotelian-Hegelian ethics, Arendt's and MacIntyre's concepts of the ethical, and the enduring significance of "species-being" to Marx.
@michaellazarus.bsky.social @stanfordpress.bsky.social

Stuart Hall, Ideology, and Neoliberalism’s Reactionary Drift by Lars Cornelissen This essay is part of a JHI Blog forum, “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History.”

For the forum on political economy, Lars Cornelissen answers Samuel Moyn’s call to conceptualize the social side of ideology by turning to Stuart Hall’s idea of ideology as “practical reason,” examining the material networks that led neoliberalism further rightward.
@lcornelissen.bsky.social

Harvests of Liberation: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Ahmad Shokr by Disha Karnad Jani

On this episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Ahmad Shokr about his book, "Harvests of Liberation," which examines the history of Egyptian decolonization through one of the nation’s most valuable commodities: cotton. @stanfordpress.bsky.social

“Spread a Rainbow Over His Disastrous Set of Sun”: The Comedy of Colonial Enlightenment by Arielle Xena Alterwaite This essay is part of a JHI Blog forum, "The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History."

In this latest addition to the JHI Blog’s Forum on political economy, Arielle Xena Alterwaite turns to C.L.R. James’s classic reading of Moby-Dick to reflect not solely on the substance of intellectual history and political economy, but also on the various styles in which this history can be told.

Hayek’s Bastards: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Quinn Slobodian by Disha Karnad Jani  On this episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Quinn Slobodian about his latest book, Hayek’s Bastards: The Neoliberal Roots of the Populist Right (Zone Bo...

Today on the podcast, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Quinn Slobodian on his latest book, “Hayek's Bastards." From Murray Rothbard to Javier Milei, Slobodian looks to "Hayek's bastards" to show the ties between neoliberalism and today's Far Right. @quinnslobodian.com

web.sas.upenn.edu/jhiblog/2026...

Labor in the Hispanic Enlightenment: Some Implications for a History of Political Economy by Mattia Steardo This think piece is part of a JHI Blog forum, “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History.”

In an essay for the JHI Blog’s forum on political economy, Mattia Steardo examines the obscurity of thinkers from the Spanish Empire in historians' discussions of early political economy—particularly those thinkers’ alternative, normative conceptualizations of labor.

Diseased and Reclaimed Landscapes: An Interview with Andrea Bagnato by Rose Facchini

For the JHI Blog, Rose Facchini interviews Andrea Bagnato about his new book, Terra Infecta: Disease and the Italian Landscape (Mack, 2025), which shows how sanitation and its metaphors were central to Italy’s internal colonialism and persist today.
@rosefacchini.bsky.social

How Reason Cultivated Abstraction: The Plantation Roots of Economic Modernity by Facundo Rocca This think piece is part of a JHI Blog forum: “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History.”

In an essay in the JHI Blog’s forum on political economy, Facundo Rocca discusses the relationship between modern rationalizations of unjust labor, ecological destruction, and the rise of the Caribbean slave trade.

web.sas.upenn.edu/jhiblog/2026...

Colonialism Unveiled: Women, Race, and Orientalism in the Conquest of Algiers by Kai Mora

Today on the blog, Kai Mora examines how gender and race figured into the literary and visual landscape of nineteenth-century France and the role of this discourse in both the French conquest of Algeria and, later, in the Algerian War of Independence.

The First Five-Year Plan, Stalinism, and the Fate of Marxist Political Economy in the USSR Véronique Mickisch This think piece is part of the forum “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History.”

For the JHI Blog's Forum on political economy, Véronique Mickisch critiques the continued association of "Marxism in practice” with the First Five-Year Plan in the Soviet Union and raises the need to recover the work of Marxist thinkers violently suppressed during the Stalinist purges of the 1930s.

Year in Review: Best of 2025 by the Primary Editors

This selection of essays and interviews reflects the wide range of scholarship published on the blog in 2025.

Three Meanings of Political Economy: Reflections on Intellectual History, Marxism, and Capitalism’s Unthought by Nate Holdren This think piece is part of a JHI Blog forum, “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History.”

In an essay in the JHI Blog’s forum on political economy, Nate Holdren elaborates three levels of analytical abstraction at which intellectual historians invoke the term "political economy," turning our attention to the way that capitalism structurally conditions ignorance of the social totality.

Mind, Matter, and the Question of Materialist Intellectual History by Alec Israeli This think piece is part of a JHI Blog forum, “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History.”

In a new piece for the JHI Forum on political economy, Alec Israeli reflects on recent debates on the method and stakes of "high" versus "low" intellectual histories, arguing for a neo-materialist approach that nuances those discursive boundaries.
web.sas.upenn.edu/jhiblog/2025...

Beyond Misplaced Ideas: Latin American Perspectives on Intellectual History and Political Economy by David Vertty This think piece is part of a JHI Blog forum, “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History.”

In the JHI forum on political economy, David Vertty considers the intersection between intellectual history and political economy as developed in and around Latin America, focusing on avenues of future research and methodological lessons from their historical, geographic, and conceptual interplay.

The Margins of the Field: Rediscovering Agricultural Economists for the History of Ideas by Federico D’Onofrio This think piece is part of a JHI Blog forum, “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History.”

In a new piece for the JHI forum on political economy, Federico D’Onofrio discusses the rise of a class of "agricultural economists" as part of a broader trend intersecting with and going beyond "rural modernism" in twentieth-century Europe.
@fdonoff.bsky.social

Mau Mau and/as Conspiracy: A Reconsideration by Christian Alvarado

What was the Mau Mau Uprising? In today's essay, Christian Alvarado reconsiders this conflict in 20th-century Kenya through the lens of conspiracy and traces what this narrative rendering (the "Mau Mau conspiracy") reveals about colonialism and anti-communism in the past and our post-truth present.

Economy and History in the Sattelzeit: On Adam Smith’s Alleged Sobriety by Lotte List This think piece is part of a JHI Blog forum: “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History.”

In a new piece for the JHI Forum on political economy, Lotte Liste critically situates Reinhart Koselleck's concept of the Sattelzeit with Adam Smith's philosophy of history. @lottelist.bsky.social

Authorship Regained: An Interview with Julien Stout By Carolina Iribarren

Today on the blog Carolina Iribarren interviews Julien Stout about his new book, "L’auteur retrouvé," which challenges established assumptions about vernacular authorship in medieval French literature but also invites us to reconsider narratives of modernity, subjectivity, and individualism.

The Disadvantages of “Fascism” for Life: An Interview with Federico Marcon (Part II) by Jonathon Catlin

Part II of this interview about Federico Marcon’s new book covers its relation to the recent “Fascism Debate," debts to Frankfurt School critical theory and other forms of historical semantics, impact on the conceptual historian's craft, and more. @joncatlin.bsky.social @uchicagopress.bsky.social

The Disadvantages of “Fascism” for Life: An Interview with Federico Marcon (Part I) by Jonathon Catlin

Today on the blog, Jon Catlin interviews Federico Marcon on his latest book, "Fascism: History of a Word," which uses semiotics to chart fascism’s changing political and heuristic meanings from its invention in Italy in 1919 to the present.
@joncatlin.bsky.social @uchicagopress.bsky.social

The Repressed Political Economy of Global Intellectual History Veronica Lazăr This think piece is part of a JHI Blog forum: “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History.”

In the JHI Blog's forum on political economy, Veronica Lazăr argues that the turn to global intellectual history has failed to take account of the financial and symbolic economy of contemporary knowledge production.
www.jhiblog.org/2025/11/24/t...

The Fractured Clock: Exploitation and Control of Transport Workers in Colonial Calcutta by Amartyajyoti Basu

Today on the blog, Amartyajyoti Basu writes on the exploitation of transport workers in colonial Calcutta, demonstrating that Indian capitalism has operated through two temporal regimes: abstract, homogeneous clock-time and concrete, task-oriented time rooted in agrarian and communal rhythms.

Zvi Griliches and the Productivity Puzzle in Midcentury American Agriculture by Ibanca Anand This think piece is part of a JHI Blog forum: “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History.”

For the JHI Blog’s forum on political economy, Ibanca Anand recounts how midcentury US growth economists' influential models of "multi-factor productivity" in agriculture systematically occluded the role of labor and supported narrow, warped criteria of economic health.

From Petro-Modernity to Petro-Post-Modernity: Disney and the American Cultural Imagination of the Oil Industry by Levi Thompson

In today's think piece, Levi Thompson analyzes an under-explored shift from petro-modernity to petro-post-modernity through Fredric Jameson's theory of culture and film.

The Roots of the Neoliberal Subject: Margaret Thatcher and the Creation of Homo Oeconomicus by Alexander Curtis This think piece is part of the forum “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History.”

In a new think piece for the JHI Forum on political economy, Alexander Curtis intervenes into today's debates around neoliberalism, arguing for the role of "irrational subjecthood" in the context of Margaret Thatcher's economic policies during the 1980s. @alexandercurtis.bsky.social

“Passing” as Japanese at the Turn of the Century: On Civilizational Equivalence in Onoto Watanna’s Oeuvre by Julia Meghan Walton

In today's think-piece, Julia Meghan Walton examines British-Chinese writer Winnifred Eaton, situating her life and career more broadly through concepts of "passing" and "civilizational equivalence."

“To Repair Evil and Enrich the Nation”: Moral Doctrine and Political Economy in Joaquín de Finestrad’s Vasallo instruido by Benjamín Gaillard-Garrido This think piece is part of the forum “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History.”

In a new think-piece for the JHI forum on political economy, Benjamín Gaillard-Garrido discusses the thought of 18th-century Catholic friar Joaquín de Finestrad as an attempt to reconcile sacred morality with materialist-oriented discourses of imperial economics and monarchism in South America.

A quote from the article: "The critical force of much of interwar ethnography has dulled with the passage of time, but Séjourné and Carrington's engagement with Indigenous Mexico, past and present, continues to shine brightly."

The October issue of the journal includes an article by Ian Merkel: "Laurette Séjourné and Leonora Carrington, Ethnography and Surrealism in Mexico." Read it here on Project Muse: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...