Rosario López (University of Málaga), J.G.A Pocock and the Politics of Going Global

Date: Tuesday 1 December
Time: 17:00
Venue: All Souls College, Hovenden Room 

In recent years, the idea that intellectual history has ‘gone global’ has become a widely accepted starting point in academic debates on its practice and identity. While descriptions of this shift often are a celebration of such development, at times they are critical of the ‘global turn’, as an ephemeral trend or ideological framework. As the field continues to flourish, there is an increasing demand for a thematic and methodological accountability. In this paper, I examine the academic fortunes of global intellectual history as a field through the lens of the writings of the late J. G. A. Pocock (1924-2023) and particularly his idea of history writing as inherently political. On this basis, I discuss Pocock’s essay "On the Unglobality of Contexts" (2019) as a contextually and politically driven intervention in academic debates. I argue that Pocock’s longstanding commitment to the alliance between historiography and politics along with his view on pluralism as central to an organic liberalism are influenced by his early encounter with Karl Popper. Politicising Pocock’s views therefore offers an effective route into current historiographical debates.