Francis Rory Peregrine "Perry" Anderson (born 11 September 1938) is a British intellectual, political philosopher, historian and essayist. His work ranges across

historical sociology Historical sociology is an Interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary field of research that combines Sociology, sociological and History, historical methods to understand the past, how societies have developed over time, and the impact this has on ...

intellectual history Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualization, conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. The investigative premise of ...

, and cultural analysis. What unites Anderson's work is a preoccupation with

Western Marxism Western Marxism is a current of Marxist theory that arose from Western and Central Europe in the aftermath of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the ascent of Leninism. The term denotes a loose collection of theorists who advanced an i ...

. Anderson is perhaps best known as the moving force behind the ''

New Left Review The ''New Left Review'' is a British bimonthly journal, established in 1960, which analyses international politics, the global economy, social theory, and cultural topics from a leftist perspective. History Background As part of the emergin ...

''. He is Professor of History and Sociology at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

(UCLA). Anderson has written many books, most recently ''Different Speeds, Same Furies: Powell, Proust and other Literary Forms'' and ''Disputing Disaster: A Sextet on the Great War''. He is the brother of political scientist Benedict Anderson (1936–2015).

Background and early life

Anderson was born in London on 11 September 1938. His father, James Carew O'Gorman Anderson (1893–1946), known as Séamas, an official with the Chinese Maritime Customs, was born into an

Anglo-Irish Anglo-Irish people () denotes an ethnic, social and religious grouping who are mostly the descendants and successors of the English Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. They mostly belong to the Anglican Church of Ireland, which was the State rel ...

family, the younger son of Brigadier-General Sir Francis Anderson, of Ballydavid,

County Waterford County Waterford () is a Counties of Ireland, county in Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster and is part of the Southern Region, Ireland, Southern Region. It is named after the city of Waterford. ...

. He was descended from the Anderson family of Ardbrake, Bothriphnie, Scotland, who had settled in Ireland in the early 18th century.Perry Anderson
A Belated Encounter
(Anderson's short biography of his father James) Anderson's mother, Veronica Beatrice Mary Bigham, was English, the daughter of Trevor Bigham, who was the Deputy Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police, 1914–1931. Anderson's grandmother, Frances, Lady Anderson, belonged to the Gaelic Gorman

clan A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, a clan may claim descent from a founding member or apical ancestor who serves as a symbol of the clan's unity. Many societie ...

County Clare County Clare () is a Counties of Ireland, county in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster in the Southern Region, Ireland, Southern part of Republic of Ireland, Ireland, bordered on the west by the Atlantic Ocean. Clare County Council ...

and was the daughter of the Irish Home Rule Member of Parliament Major Purcell O'Gorman,James Frost
"The History and Topography of the County of Clare – Pedigree of MacGorman (O'Gorman)"
Clare County Library. himself the son of Nicholas Purcell O'Gorman who had been involved with the Republican Society of United Irishmen during the 1798 Rebellion, later becoming Secretary of the Catholic Association in the 1820s. Anderson's father had previously been married to the novelist Stella Benson, and it was after her death in 1933 that he married again. Anderson was educated at Eton and Worcester College, Oxford, where he took his first degree.Gregory Elliott (1998)
Perry Anderson: The Merciless Laboratory of History, University of Minnesota Press
p. 1. Early in his life, Anderson made a brief foray into rock criticism, writing under the pseudonym Richard Merton.

Career

In 1962 Anderson became editor of the ''

'', a position he held for twenty years. As scholars of the

New Left The New Left was a broad political movement that emerged from the counterculture of the 1960s and continued through the 1970s. It consisted of activists in the Western world who, in reaction to the era's liberal establishment, campaigned for freer ...

began to reassess their canon in the mid-1970s, Anderson provided an influential perspective. He published two major volumes of analytical history in 1974: '' Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism'' focuses on the creation and endurance of feudal social formations, while '' Lineages of the Absolutist State'' examines monarchical absolutism. Within their respective topics they are each vast in scope, assessing the whole history of Europe from classical times to the nineteenth century. The books achieved an instant prominence for Anderson, whose wide-ranging analysis synthesised elements of history, philosophy, and

political theory Political philosophy studies the theoretical and conceptual foundations of politics. It examines the nature, scope, and legitimacy of political institutions, such as states. This field investigates different forms of government, ranging from d ...

. In the 1980s, Anderson took office as a professor at the

New School for Social Research The New School for Social Research (NSSR), previously known as The University in Exile and The New School University, is a graduate-level educational division of The New School in New York City, United States. NSSR enrolls more than 1,000 stud ...

in New York. He returned as editor at ''NLR'' in 2000 for three more years, and after his retirement continued to serve on the journal's editorial committee. As of 2019, he has continued to make contributions to the ''

London Review of Books The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published bimonthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews. History The ''London Review of Book ...

'', and pursued teaching as a Distinguished Professor of History and Sociology at the

Influence and criticism

Anderson bore the brunt of the disapproval of E. P. Thompson in the latter's ''The Poverty of Theory'', in a controversy during the late 1970s over the structuralist Marxism of

Louis Althusser Louis Pierre Althusser (, ; ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher who studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. Althusser was a long-time member an ...

, and the use of history and theory in the politics of the Left. In the mid-1960s, Thompson wrote an essay for the annual '' Socialist Register'' that rejected Anderson's view of

aristocratic Aristocracy (; ) is a form of government that places power in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocrats. Across Europe, the aristocracy exercised immense economic, political, and social influence. In Western Christian co ...

dominance of Britain's historical trajectory, as well as Anderson's seeming preference for continental European theorists over radical British traditions and

empiricism In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological view which holds that true knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience and empirical evidence. It is one of several competing views within epistemology, along ...

. Anderson delivered two responses to Thompson's polemics, first in an essay in ''New Left Review'' (January–February 1966) called "Socialism and Pseudo-Empiricism", and then in a more conciliatory yet ambitious overview, ''Arguments within English Marxism'' (1980). While Anderson faced many attacks in his native Britain for favouring continental European philosophers over British thinkers, he did not spare Western European Marxists from criticism, such as in his ''Considerations on Western Marxism'' (1976). Nevertheless, many of his assaults were delivered against

postmodernist Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, Culture, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting ...

currents in continental Europe. In his book ''In the Tracks of Historical Materialism'', Anderson depicts Paris as the new capital of intellectual reaction.

Works

''Passages From Antiquity to Feudalism''
(1974). London: New Left Books. .
''Lineages of the Absolutist State''
(1974). London: New Left Books. . * ''Considerations on Western Marxism'' (1976). London: Verso. . * ''The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci'' 976(2017). London: Verso. . * ''Arguments within English Marxism'' (1980). London: Verso. . * ''In the Tracks of Historical Materialism'' (1983). London: Verso. . * ''English Questions'' (1992). London: Verso. . * ''A Zone of Engagement'' (1992). London: Verso. .
''The Origins of Postmodernity''
(1998). London: Verso. .
''Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas''
(2005). London: Verso. . * '' The New Old World'' (2009). London: Verso. . * '' The Indian Ideology'' (2012). New Delhi: Three Essays Collective. . *
American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers
' (2014). London: Verso. . * ''The H-Word: The Peripeteia of Hegemony'' (2017). London: Verso. . * ''Brazil Apart: 1964-2019'' (2019). London: Verso. * ''Ever Closer Union?: Europe in the West'' (2021). London: Verso. * ''Different Speeds, Same Furies: Powell, Proust and other Literary Forms'' (2022). London: Verso. . * ''Disputing Disaster: A Sextet on the Great War'' (2024) London: Verso.

References

External links