All over the world, we are currently observing deepening crises of liberal democracies and an intensification of authoritarian and neo-fascist tendencies. Emergencies of Authoritarianism is an international and interdisciplinary research project dedicated to deepening our understanding of this contemporary global constellation of authoritarianisms. ‘Emergencies’ implies emergences: It captures the heterogeneous genealogies of authoritarianism both in their spatial specificity and their temporal transformations and shifts. More importantly, ‘Emergencies’ also connect scientific analysis with democratic intervention: An emergency is an urgent situation that demands an immediate response. We therefore strive in to combine scientific analysis with the search for practical perspectives for policy making, alliance building and concrete solidarity.
All over the world, we are currently observing deepening crises of liberal democracies and an intensification of authoritarian and neo-fascist tendencies. Emergencies of Authoritarianism is an international and interdisciplinary research project dedicated to deepening our understanding of this contemporary global constellation of authoritarianisms. ‘Emergencies’ implies emergences: It captures the heterogeneous genealogies of authoritarianism both in their spatial specificity and their temporal transformations and shifts. More importantly, ‘Emergencies’ also connect scientific analysis with democratic intervention: An emergency is an urgent situation that demands an immediate response. We therefore strive in to combine scientific analysis with the search for practical perspectives for policy making, alliance building and concrete solidarity.
In the fourth episode of our series “Dispatches of Authoritarianism”, our project member Rosaura Martínez Ruiz elaborates on her concept of Antigonia as a modification and politicization of Freud´s notion of mourning, which enables us to perceive the political claim to mourn put forward by the collectives of buscadoras in Mexico as an anti-authoritarian struggle.
In this episode of Dispatches, Zeynep Gambetti discusses the current situation in Turkey by tracing today’s configuration back to the disruptive rather than soft implementation of neoliberalism. Zeynep Gambetti analyzes the profound transformation of the economy into a market-integrated economy and how political subjectivities have changed alongside the subsequent unfolding of the neoliberal societal transformation.
Emergencies of authoritarianism require not only a precise theoretical analysis, but also an urgent political response. In our series ‘Emergency Calls’, we talk to non-academic partners to ask them for advice: What is changing under authoritarian rule, especially for marginalized and vulnerable groups? What are the international connections of different authoritarian conjunctures? And above all: What is to be done?
In this Emergency Call, we spoke with Lili and Ari from YoNoFui, an abolitionist, transfeminist, and anti-punitivist collective in Buenos Aires. They shared how they organize against authoritarianism and prisons, which they call ‘contemporary legalized torture centers’ as well as the changes and continuities they are experiencing under Milei’s government, and why we should unite under the banner of anti-repression.
YoNoFui uses art, creativity, and popular education to build solidarity between incarcerated people and those outside. They work on prison, gender, and capitalism.
Photo credit: yonofui.org.ar/
Mission Statement
Authoritarian, right-wing populist, and fascist tendencies are currently gaining strength all over the world. The task is not only to analyze authoritarianism critically, but also to respond to it politically. For this purpose, this project proposes the novel concept of Emergencies of Authoritarianism. Emergencies implies emergences, the development of authoritarian tendencies out of their “normal” latency and enabling conditions. We adopt a critical perspective that analyzes local trajectories in their transversal global entanglements and complex interactions in order to avoid both methodological nationalism and Eurocentric bias. At the same time, emergencies imply urgencies: they demand an immediate response. Authoritarianisms cannot be reduced to past times, nor to distant places, but can emerge, with new victim groups, anywhere.
Over the coming years, the project will organize workshops and conferences at different locations around the globe and present its results in various publication formats. As a transnational network with equal partners from the Global South, we work closely with non-academic actors such as NGOs, cultural institutions, and journalists, using locally generated knowledge to develop robust responses to the threat of authoritarianism.
Emergencies of Authoritarianism is a project of the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs (ICCTP). The ICCTP aims to document and facilitate the new global contours of critical theory today by supporting critical thought both inside and outside the university in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and science and technology studies.
The project team is coordinated by Judith Butler (Berkeley), Robin Celikates (Berlin), Daniel Loick (Amsterdam), and Zeynep Gambetti (Istanbul), and involves Debaditya Bhattacharya (Delhi), Gisela Catanzaro (Buenos Aires), Denise Ferreira Da Silva (New York), Rosaura Martínez (Mexico City), and Eva von Redecker (Berlin). “Emergencies of Authoritarianism” is funded by the VolkswagenStiftung (Germany).
Partners
