A widespread sense has evolved in the West that the only promise the future holds is one of worsening living conditions. Together with the loss of a sense of futurity, there appears to be a loss of concrete political alternatives. This demise of futurity is of utmost relevance for political theorists, as it has potentially devastating effects on the scope and status of political practice as well as critique. The central aim of this conference is to pose the question of how to recover a sense of futurity in critical thinking and the possibility of democratic alternatives. How can we rethink critique as an array of imaginative practices of freedom that disclose new ways of living and acting politically? And, can we gain a sense of how critique as “a possibility-disclosing practice” (Kompridis) can be revitalized in an anticipatory way through forms of prefiguration and pre-enactment?
ATTENTION: the first day of the conference, June 8, has been cancelled. The conference will still take place as planned on Friday, June 9 (see programme below).
Friday, June 9
Department of Political Science, Hörsaal 1 (Room A 0212, NIG, 1. Universitätsstraße 7/2nd floor)
- 9:30 – 10:45
Oliver Marchart (Vienna): Opening
Mathijs van de Sande (Leuven): Prefiguration and Performative Enactment: An Anarchist Approach to Contemporary Protest Movements
- 11:00 – 12:15
Regina Kreide (Gießen): The Loss of (Democratic) Visions and the Unequal Future. - 14:00 – 15:15
Nassima Sahraoui (Frankfurt/M.): Pré-figurés: Devant la force. Violence, Resistance, and the Potentiality of a Dynamic Selfhood. A Paradox in Three and a Half Acts - 15:15 – 16:30
Mathias Thaler (Edinburgh): Peace as a Minor, Grounded Utopia. On Prefigurative and Testimonial Pacifism - 17:00 – 18:15
Isabella Guanzini (Graz): Prophecy vs Utopia? Theological-political Considerations on Democratic Futurity
- 18:15 – 19:30
Florian Grosser (Berkeley): Uncommon Communities or the Bond of 'Worldbuilding': Reimagining Coexistence in an Age of Forced Migration
Registration and contact: politische.theorie@univie.ac.at
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