COMAROFFS PUBLISH NEW ESSAY ON GENERATIONS AND GENERATIONALITY
John and Jean Comaroff recently published a pathbreaking new essay on a topic of critical importance in the contemporary world: generation and intergenerational relations. It focused on the social, material, cultural, political rationalities that different generations bring to those relations with each other – and why there is so much talk these days on “the generation war.” Published in The Monist (Oxford University Press, Volume 106, Issue 2, April 2023, 165-180), one of the oldest and most distinguished journals of philosophy, the Comaroffs offer the following synopsis of their essay:
“How are relations between generations shifting? As anthropologists, our take on intergenerational relations and the rationalities on which they are based—i.e., generationality—is historically situated. In many parts of the world, generation has become a major axis of social and political struggle, sometimes of bitter conflict. This, we argue, is a corollary of post-Cold War transformations in economy and society—and a radical rupture in processes of social reproduction. These transformations have conduced to the perception of a rising ‘generation war.’ How, then, in these circumstances, are we to think anew of intergenerational relations—and justice?”
In addressing these questions, the essay opens up a new theoretical framework for understanding contemporary “generationality” and its impact on the history of the present.