Guest Lecture: John-Erik Hansson

Recovering a “Forgotten Forefather” Figure to Reinvent Anarchism: William Godwin’s Anarchist Reception in Britain and France after World War II

John-Erik Hansson is a lecturer in British history at Université Paris Cité and Fellow in Residence at CY AS, with the AGORA research unit. He specialises in the cultural and intellectual history of radicalism from the late eighteenth century onwards. He is especially interested in the writings of the late eighteenth-century radical William Godwin, the history of anarchism, and the intersection of these two subjects.

It has been asserted that, in the years after World War II, anarchism as an ideology and movement was in decline and becoming increasingly moribund and irrelevant. More recent work on the history of twentieth-century anarchism has started to question that view, arguing instead that anarchism went through a period of transition and transformation, as it adapted to the context of the Cold War.

This lecture contributes to this reassessment through the case study of the recovery of the eighteenth-century radical thinker and “English Jacobin” William Godwin (1756-1836) on both sides of the Channel. It sheds light on a network of anarchist intellectuals, including figures such as George Woodcock, Colin Ward, André Prudhommeaux, Hem Day, Cesare Zaccaria and José Garcia Pradas, who sought to develop and legitimise a gradualist approach to radical change in the context of the Cold War. To do so, they drew attention away from anarchism’s late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century revolutionary heyday and mobilised the writings of the then relatively unknown late eighteenth-century radical polymath William Godwin, whose peaceful gradualism echoed their own. Lastly, by examining the construction of this alternative genealogy, the lecture seeks to interrogate the role of historiography in the production and circulation of political ideologies.

Date : April 8, 2025 from 2pm to 3pm.
The hybrid guest lecture is organised in person at the H008 meeting room of MIR in Neuville-sur-Oise and remotely on Zoom.

To attend the remote guest lecture, please connect to Zoom: https://cyu-fr.zoom.us/j/94487928090?pwd=788CzJ1Ww8sGvhYadE7CnAKlTaCSaw.1


The video will be online on the CY AS YouTube channel