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Description·Democracy in Nihilistic Times
Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics, School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Brighton UK 31st of March to 2nd of April 2025
Event Location
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Additional ItemsContactPlease contact Suzy Armsden [email protected] with any issues More InformationMonday 31st of March: Welcome to Conference 11.00: M2 Grand Parade
Keynote Lecture 1
Professor Paul Gilroy
“Political Eschatologies of Mismanaged Decline”
11.15 – 12.30: M2 Grand Parade (tbc)
Lunch | 12.30 – 1.30 | Grand Parade Cafeteria
Session 1: 13.30pm – 15.30pm
Panel 1 Democratic Futures Room: M2 Grand Parade | Chair:
Paulina Tambakaki, University of Westminster, UK: Democracy and Economies of Popular Desire
Ricardo Camargo Brito, University of Chile: Politics and Institutions: With or Beyond Democracy?
Chris Griffin, University of Brighton Countersigning Democracy: Exclusion, Coloniality, and Dispossessive Citizenship
Ronja Heymann, University of Essex, Cooperation, Community, and Competition: Neoliberalism and the Social Conditions of Democracy
Panel 2 Neoliberal Authoritarianism and the Politics of Gender Room: tbc, Grand Parade | Chair:
Jacob Johanssen, University of St Marys, UK and Jilly Boyce Kay (Loughborough University, UK: Reactionary gender politics and digital media: incels, femcels, and the rise of heteronihilism
Jenny Gunnarsson Payne, Sodertorn University: Navigating ‘identity’: Queer migration and solidarity across borders in times of geopolitical polarisation between anti-LGBTQ politics and homonationalism
Emily Cousens, Northeastern University, London: Cismelancholic attachments to sexual difference and radical feminist transphobia
Przemyslaw Kantorski, University of Silesia in Katowice: The sum of all fears. Unpacking populist religious media discourses on "gender ideology"
Panel 3: Thinking Politics after Coloniality Room: tbc Grand Parade | Chair:
David Ventura, University of Newcastle Refiguring States of Injury with da Silva’s Wounded Captive Body
Ameet Ubhi, City University London: Towards an Echopoesis
Hannah Voegele, Freie Universität Berlin Feminism and Sexual Statecraft: Crafting Consent and Coloniality
Maria Socorro Perez, University of the Philippines The Discourse of the “White Ideal” as a Constitutive Mechanism of Filipino/Ilocano-Hawaiian Immigrants and its corresponding Promise and the Attainment of the “American Dream”
Coffee & Tea | Grand Parade Cafe | 15.30-16.00
Session 2: 16.00 – 18.00
Panel 1 Democratic Futures 2 Room: M2 Grand Parade | Chair:
Lucile Richard, University of Oxford: Feminist Care Politics, the “Care Crisis”, and the (Under-)Theorization of Care-receiving.
Noirin Mcnamara (TU Dublin): The challenge of gestation and pregnancy to claims of self-generation and understandings of political freedom
Catherine Koekoek, Erasmus School of Philosophy, Netherlands Avenues for articulation: neoliberalism, ownership and the cultural archive
Panel 2 The Politics of Neoliberalism Room: tbc Grand Parade | Chair:
Alex Taek Gwang Lee, Kyung Hee University, Korea The Birth of Neoliberal Economic Subjectivity
Marco Zolli, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa: When was Neoliberalism new? Considerations around the Walter Lippman’s Colloquium
Mattias Lehtinen, University of Helsinki, Finland: The Imaginary Foundation of Political Rationality: The Case of Weaponized Neoliberalism
Agustín Lucas Prestifilippo, University of Buenos Aires: Society Must Be Reassembled? On the Last Neoliberal Assault on the Social
Panel 3 | The Contested Politics of Knowledge Room: M2 Grand Parade | Chair:
Peter Conlin, University of Nottingham, UK Statistics, data behaviourism and nihilism
Bob Brecher, University of Brighton, Emeritus Professor: Anathema: Anglophone Universities under neoliberalism
Kim Yutuc, University of the Phillipines: It Takes a University: The University of the Philippines, Fraternity-Related Violence, and the Genealogy of an Absence
Isaac Thornton – The place of international students within British Higher Education in nihilistic times
18.00-19.00: RECEPTION Grand Parade CAFÉ and M2
TUESDAY 1st of April
Late Registration | 09:00am – 9:30am | Grand Parade Foyer
Keynote Lectures 2 and 3: 9.30 – 11.30pm M2 Grand Parade | Chair:
Nihilism as possessive diremption from life Eva von Redecker
Democracy after the ‘Anthropocene’ Mark Devenney
Tea and Coffee Grand Parade Café: 11.30-12.00
Session 3: 12.00-13.30
Panel 1 Resistant Temporalities | Room: tbc, Grand Parade | Chair:
Giovanni Battista Soda, University Vita Salute, Italy: Identity Politics is more about History than Universality: retrieving Brown’s historicism
Daniel Fraser, University College Cork, Ireland: Resistant Temporalities: History and Geological Time in Paul Celan and Marguerite Duras
Andy Knott, University of Brighton, UK 'In the ruins of neoliberal financialised globalisation: Brown's timings'
Panel 2 Democracy, Community and Morality Room: tbc, Grand Parade | Chair:
Rinella Cere, Sheffield Hallam University: Community: Notes on a Slippery Concept
Yagmur Kizalay Bicer, University of Brighton: De-territorialisation of Democracy
Jacques Lezra, University of California Riverside, US: Magna parens terra est: The logic of catastrophism
Panel 3: Authoritarian Freedom Room: tbc, Grand Parade | Chair:
Axel Rivera Osorio, The University of New Mexico: The abuse of the discourses of freedom by the extreme right.
Kat Zacharek, University of Brighton Nostalgia and Melancholy: A force for right-wing mobilization
Viktoria Huegel, University of Vienna “Only a god can save us”? Charismatic leadership in authoritarian times
Lunch| Grand Parade Cafeteria | 1.30pm – 2.15pm
Session 4: 2.15 – 4.15
Panel 1Right Wing Populisms Room: M2 Grand Parade | Chair:
Christina Miliou Theocharaki, University of Sussex, UK: ‘Rights-washing’ when providing legal aid in the field of migration in Greece.
Alex Yates and Aurelien Mondon, University of Bath, UK Can Populism be Right Wing?
Lucas Garcia, University of Pelotas, Brazil From freedom to economic submission – a Laclauian reading of Bolsonaro in the 2022 elections
Henrique Tavares Furtado, University of West of England: Should we Reconcile with the Far Right? The Aftermath of the 2024 Race Riots in Britain and the End of Post-Fascism
Panel 2 | Democratic Politics after the ‘Anthropocene’ Room: tbc, Grand Parade | Chair:
Stijn De Cauwer, University of Leiden, Netherlands: From the Wolf to the World: French Environmental Philosophy in the Light of the Work of Wendy Brown
Jan Bierhanzl: Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic The Politics of the Catholic Church on Climate Change: between Nihilism and Reparative Critique
Alexander Kurunczi, University of Vienna: From Melancholia to Post-Revolutionary Institutions? Rethinking Revolution in the Age of Ecological Catastrophe
Liam Farrell, Manchester Met, UK: 'Freedom and Critique in the Anthropocene. Or, How to Mourn Political Theory'
Panel 3 Nihilism, Politics and Technology Room: M2 Grand Parade | Chair:
Tom Pryce, University of Brighton: Resisting the nihilistic reduction of beings to resources: Re-reading Heideggerian ontological pluralism
Amira Moeding, University of Cambridge: Continuing the Past into the Future Thinking with Wendy Brown and Walter Benjamin about the Nihilistic Politics of the Technology Industry
Billy Koutcher, London School of Economics: Thinking beyond Neoliberal Nihilism
Timothy Wei Bin Siew and Dr Bernstein, University of Manchester, UK: A Harm Alleviating Democracy Against Political Nihilism
Coffee & Tea | Grand Parade Cafe 4.15-4.30 Session 5: 16.30-18.00
Panel 1 Refiguring Political Theory Room: M2 Grand Parade | Chair
Hannah Richter, University of Sussex, UK: Conducting counter-conduct: the (neo)liberal resistance of authoritarian populism
Mostyn Taylor Crocket, University of Warwick, UK: Genealogy as Affective Critical Praxis – A politics of the impossible
Emilia Palonen, University of Helsinki: The social contract through the lens of hegemony: new heuristics for analysing contemporary struggles
Panel 2 Neoliberalism and the Politics of Permanent Crisis Room: tbc, Grand Parade | Chair:
Toby Lovat, University of Brighton “The goal is lacking; an answer to the question ‘why?’” On Brown’s Post Nihilist Values
Ante Aandabak, University of Zagreb: Freedom and the Necessity of Politics in Marx – A Comradely Response to Wendy Brown
Arianne Shahvisi, University of Brighton: Do Humans have Moral Status?
Panel 3 Freedom after Neoliberalism Room: tbc, Grand Parade | Chair:
Samia Mohammad, University of Bremen: Freedom after Authoritarian Neoliberalism?
Luca Richiardi, University of Sapienza, Rome From authoritarian character to authoritarian freedom. Wendy Brown and the legacy of the Frankfurt School
Luke Edmeads, University of Brighton, UK: Brown, Adorno and the Politics of Neoliberalism
Conference Dinner | Venue tbc| 8.00pm
WEDNESDAY 2nd of April
Conference Keynote: 9.30-11.30 M2 Grand Parade
“Nihilism, Manhood, & Politics: Wendy Brown Contra Leo Strauss” Robyn Marasco, Hunter College, City University, New York
“Must the University have a Vocation? Notes from a Platform Academy” Debaditya Bhattacharya, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi
Session 6: 11.30 to 13.00
Panel 1: Wounded Attachments and Affective Politics Room: M2 Grand Parade | Chair:
Jana Cattien, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands Does This Hurt? Thinking Pain with Wendy Brown
Wanda Canton, University of Brighton: The lucrative economy of wounded attachments and cool capital is an abolitionist problem
Yasmine Lucas, University of Toronto, Canada: Neoliberal Affect of Holocaust Restitution, Or the Formation of a Judeo-Christian Alliance
Panel 2 Refiguring Political Theory Room: | Chair:
Wojciech Ufel, University of Wrocław: Tragedy and Eco-pessimism Beyond Melancholia and Nihilism: Rethinking Krisis and katharsis with Wendy Brown
Clara Ramas San Miguel, Complutense Madrid Comedy in nihilistic times: On Wendy Brown and Hegel
Jandra Boettger, Freie Universität Berlin: Between Left Melancholia and Cruel Optimism: Towards A Materialist Theory of Structures of Unfeeling
Panel 3 Thinking Democratic Futures Room: tbc, Grand Parade | Chair:
Alice Gibson: Solidarity in the Triple Planetary Crisis
Joanna Kellond University of Brighton: Homo Oeconomicus, Homo Politicus or Homines Curans?
Julia Boll, University of Konstanz: "We've Got a Corpse to Dismember: Why the End is not the End"
Lunch 13.00 – 14.00| Grand Parade Cafeteria
Grand Parade M2: 14.00-15.30
CLOSING LECTURE Wendy Brown: “Listening for Political Freedom”
Closing conversation with keynotes
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