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.
CONFERENCE
Reconfiguring political futures:
(Dis-)junctions between neoliberal authoritarianism and new forms of fascism
October 22-24, 2026
ETERON, Athens
Thursday, October 22
10:30-11:00
Welcome & Introductions
Athena Athanasiou, Panteion University
Zeynep Gambetti, International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs
11:00-13:00
Panel 1 – Genocide, colonialism, and postcolonial theory under authoritarian conditions
Chair: Robin Celikates (Freie Universität)
Abdaljawad Omar (Birzeit University)
The Revolutionary Boomerang: Gaza, Genocide, and the Hollowing Out of the Political World
Volkan Çıdam (Pauluskirsche Professor, Frankfurt)
Against the Far-Right Appropriation of Post-Colonial Theory: The Case of Turkey
Shahd Hammouri (Kent University)
The Philosophy of Self-determination in the Age of Genocide: A Theoretical Preamble
Şebnem Oğuz (Independent scholar)
Late Fascism as the Articulation of Internal Colonialism and Sub-Imperialism: The Turkish Case
13:00-14:30 – Lunch
14:30-16:30
Panel 2 – Formations of state violence, horizons of critical potential
Chair: Rosaura Martinez Ruiz (National Autonomous University of Mexico)
Dimitra Andritsou (Forensic Architecture Initiative Athens)
Counter-forensics: Situated Documentation across Force Fields and Alibis
Pınar Bedirhanoğlu (Middle East Technical University)
Modern Republican Political Form of the Capitalist State: An Episode in the History of Capitalist Domination
Yannis Stavrakakis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)
Accounting for the Trump Phenomenon: From ‘Authoritarian Populism’ to What?
Tuğba Tekerek (Independent journalist)
Academia and Media Under the Erdoğan Regime: Controlling Knowledge and Information in Turkey
16:30-16:45 – Coffee Break
16:45-18:45
Panel 3 – Anti-gender normativity, modes of political persistence
Chair: Leticia Sabsay (London School of Economics)
Aylime Aslı Demir (Activist and curator)
The Anti-Gender Repression Queue in Turkey
Firoozeh Farfadin (University of Vienna)
Against Fascisation and War Regime: Politics of Care as a Feminist Counterstrategy in Iran
Vasiliki Polykarpou (Panteion University)
Practicing Hope Against a Hostile Present: Intersectional Solidarities and Coalitional Politics in Post-Crisis Athens
Betül Yarar (Independent scholar)
Fascism Emerging from the Ruins of Neoliberalism: Individual and Collective Narcissism-Nihilism and Male Violence
Friday, October 23
10:30-12:30
Panel 4 – The psychic and affective lives of authoritarianism
Chair: Debaditya Bhattacharya (Jamia Millia Islamia University Delhi)
Eirini Avramopoulou (Panteion University)
History’s detour: Progress anxiety and the musealisation of (neo)fascism
Antonis Galanopoulos (Eteron Institute)
Beyond far-right normalization: Is there a fascination with contemporary authoritarianism?
Maria Louka (Eteron Institute)
Movement Responses, Collective Mourning, and “Familiar” vs. “Foreign” Pain in Two State Crimes in Greece Today
Renata Salecl (University of Ljubliana)
Apathy and Authoritarian Futures
12:30-14:00 – Lunch
14:00-16:00
Panel 5 – Resisting border violence
Chair: Daniel Loick (University of Amsterdam)
Hourya Bentouhami (Université Toulouse II)
The Right to Flee. Refuge and the European Border Regime from a Moroccan Perspective
Ezgi Pınar (Istanbul University)
Labour, Migration, and Contemporary Processes of Authoritarian Consolidation
Piro Rexhepi (London School of Economics)
No one seemed unsettled by the camp
Sophia Zisakou (Lund University)
From the borders of the nation to the boundaries of the self: Discomfort as method
16:00-16:15 – Coffee break
16:15-18:15
Panel 6 – Imagining futures beyond neoliberal authoritarianism
Chair: Denise Ferreira da Silva (New York University)
Alkisti Efthymiou (Panteion University)
The present is not finished: Insurrectionary hauntings in Greek and Chilean cinema.
Anna Papaeti (ERC Scholar, National Hellenic Research Foundation)
Listening to Conflict: Reflections on the Case of Cyprus
Nelli Kambouri (Panteion University)
The Buzzing of Translation: Listening to the sounds of border violence and resistance in the centre of Athens
18:15-19:30
Sofia Dona, Kararakt (Film projection)
Discussion with the director
20:00 – Conference dinner at Avgo tou Kokkora
Saturday, October 24
10:30-12:30
Panel 7 – Ecological struggles against extractivism
Chair: Eva von Redecker (University of Fine Arts Hamburg)
Özlem Altıparmak (Lawyer)
Defending the Commons Under the Neoliberal-Authoritarian Nexus: Environmental Litigation, Care, and ‘Legal Exhaustion’ in Türkiye
Özlem Aslan (Kadir Has University)
Defending Life-Spaces: Ecological Struggles and the Contestation of Authoritarian Extractivism in Turkey
Alexandros Kioupkiolis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)
‘Common populism’ as a strategy of counterhegemony against green neocolonialism
12:30-14:00 – Lunch
14:00-16:00
Panel 8 – Articulating dissidence, solidarity, and protest
Chair: Gisela Catanzaro (University of Buenos Aires)
Mert Arslanalp (Boğaziçi University)
Beyond the Regime Divide: The Legal Gray Zone of Protest Repression in Comparative Perspective
Dimitris Papanikolaou (Oxford University)
The Archive Vanishes? Biopolitical realism and the question of history
Bernadett Sebály (Central European University)
Civil Society as a Terrain of Struggle: Understanding the Emergence of Authoritarianism through the Agency of Regime-Aligned Civic Organizations
Adriana Zaharijević (University of Belgrade)
The never-ending step between envisioning and building. Against transactional authoritarianism
16:00-16:15 – Coffee break
16:15-18:15
Roundtable and open forum: Reimagining the political beyond authoritarian presents
Alex Taek-Gwang Lee, Kyung Hee University
Leticia Sabsay, London School of Economics
Athena Athanasiou, Panteion University
Zeynep Gambetti, International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs
In the fifth episode of “Dispatches of Authoritarianism”, Adriana Zaharijević discusses transactional authoritarianism in Serbia under Aleksandar Vučić and the Serbian Progressive Party. In this system, governance increasingly operates through exchanges of access to jobs, services, and opportunities in exchange for loyalty to the ruling party. Although institutions such as parliament, elections, and opposition remain in place, their role in shaping political life has steadily been hollowed out. The result is a system in which citizens become clients, public goods become resources for private gain, and political thinking is discouraged. However, the Serbian student movement challenges this logic by resisting the idea that everything and everyone has a price.
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.
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
