Terror and Humanism: Fatalism and Contingency in Deborah Levenson’s "Trade Unionists Against Terror"

• In Event: Deborah Levenson Trade Unionists Against Terror: the Book, a Legacy for the Latin American Workers History

Abstract

Deborah Levenson's Trade Unionists Against Terror opens with an arresting image: a recurrent dream of had by a truck driver, in the midst of unimaginable state terror directed at unionists, of his continual escape from a hideous devil. My presentation will focus on Levenson’s remarkable book as a bid to interpret this dream both historically and sociologically, in a way that simultaneously captures structure and contingency, objective power and its subjective experience. I’ll argue that while many of the books conceptual concerns were already raised within labor and working-class historiography, Levenson offered a singular study.

Author

• Greg J Grandin, New York University