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Dr. Balze of Cambridge at FHS

German Historical Institute Warsaw, Collegium Carolinum, History – Theory – Criticism Journal and the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University are delighted to invite to the lecture "Hostile Take-Over. A Political History of the Colour Red" by Dr. Balze (University of Cambridge). The lecture takes place on Tuesday, January 14 at SLÚ AV ČR (Valentinská 91/1).

Abstract of the lecture:

For much of human history red has been the most symbolic of all colours – and still is the most political. That the colour red has become the sign for revolution and the working class was in fact the result of a long lasting social struggle and the contestation of symbolic power.

This lecture will examine the contentious history of the symbolic social order and the unsettling experience of the dispossession of the traditional colour of the ruling classes. When we look at symbolic transformations during early modern times we can observe how the exclusiveness of red as a signifier of power and domination had increasingly been coming under scrutiny. Unrests and mutinies were beginning to happen under some sort of red banner while insurgent leaders dared to wear red garments that still were reserved to the nobility or the church.

Eventually, following up on the French Revolution and the European Revolutions of 1848, the red flag was taken over by the masses and therefore the symbolic colour of the ruling classes for thousands of years had been dispossessed. The working class and its organizations expropriated and appropriated the colour that stood for the venerable domination of the ruling class. They turned over the red, so that today the colour red had been naturalized as the signifier for social revolt, the working class and communism at large. This very dispossession will be examined in this lecture by looking at the contested longue durée of red as a political signifier in history.