Empire, Capital and Transnational Resistance. CAPPE international conference 2017

13-15 September, 2017

The past decade has witnessed widespread resistance to neoliberalism across the world. Unlike the anti-colonial revolts of the 1950s and 1960s, this resistance has tended either to fizzle out or to be appropriated by states. This conference considers recent forms of resistance to corporate, neoliberal and state power in the context of the post-colonnial world. It looks towards the emergence of transnational forms of resistance linking different parts of the globe, exploring their limits and their potential.

Themes included

• What is resistance?
• What is political action? What counts as political resistance?
• What is political about political philosophy and or politics?
• How should we understand ‘the state’, ’empire’ and ‘capital’ in today’s world?
• How does the changing relationship between state and corporation affect understandings of citizenship?
• What are the interrelations between corporate and disciplinary power?
• What is “the question of difference” in the neoliberal conjuncture?
• What relationships are there between neoliberalism and populism?
• Borders
• Rethinking ‘colonialism’
• Trump, Brexit and the Right: implications for realignments of resistance

Wednesday 13 September

Session 1: 11.30am – 1.00pm

Panel 1 | Room: Edward Street 102 | Chair: David Martin

Paul Reynolds, Edge Hill University, UK, Is Violence – Against Property or Persons – Ever Justifiable in Contemporary Radical Left Politics?

Radha D’Souza, University of Westminster, UK, Empire, Capital and Transnational Resistance: Learning from the Ghadar Movement

Panel 2 | Room: Edward Street 103 | Chair: Filipa Cordeiro

Franco Tomassoni, Portuguese Institute for International Relations, Portugal, From Colonialism to Hegemony in the Angolan case. How has the Form of Domination in the Post-Colonial and Neoliberal Era Changed?

Aleksi Lohtaja, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, Rethinking the Right to the City: Housing between Commodity and Commons

Keynote | 2.00pm – 3.30pm | Edward Street 102

John Chalcraft | London School of Economics, UK | Chair: Radha D’Souza Transnational Activism: A Sociopolitical Perspective

Session 2: 4.00pm – 5.30pm

Panel 1 | Room: Edward Street 102 | Chair: Mark McGovern

Lisha Sinha, Guru Ghasidas Central University, India, Alternative Forms of Resistance in a Vulnerable World: Emergence, Possibility and Validity

Filipa Cordeiro, Nova University Lisbon, Portugal, Improper Names and the “Ready-Made Subject” as Strategies of Resistance in Art Practice

Panel 2 | Room: Edward Street 103 | Chair: Paul Reynolds

Struan Gray, University of Brighton, UK, Behind the Neoclassical Façade: A Haunted National Monument in Post-Dictatorship Chilean Film

Phil Vellender, Independent Scholar, UK, “We are many; they are few”: Corbyn discovers Shelley

Thursday 14th September

Session 3: 10.30am – 12.00am

Panel 1 | Room: Edward Street 102 | Chair: Robin Dunford

Tanita Jill Poeggel, University of Edinburgh, UK, Active/Active Citizens and Refugees

Elizabeth Chant, University of Cambridge, UK, Art as Resistance: Spatialising National Memory Through Film in Post-Dictatorship Chile

Panel 2 | Room: Edward Street 103 | Chair: Jonathan Yong Tienxhi

Nicola Rivers & David Webster, University of Gloucestershire, UK, Vulnerability as a Revolutionary Act: Resistance against neoliberal discourses of resilience

Meriam Mabrouk, University of Sussex, UK, Neoliberalism and the Re-generation of Agrarian Capitalist Relations in Morocco: Who is the Coloniser and the Colonised?

Session 4: 12.00am – 1.30pm

Panel 1 | Room: Edward Street 102 | Chair: Struan Gray

Thomas Sommer-Houdeville, University of Stockholm, Sweden, Neoliberalism, The “Culturalisation of Politics” and Violence

Ben Jeffery, University of Chicago, USA, Ian McEwan’s Saturday and the Perception of the World

Panel 2 | Room: Edward Street 103 | Chair: Megan Archer

Yiorgos Moraitis, Bremen University, Germany, Fetishism and Contradiction in David Harvey’s Version of Marxism

Stephen O’Kane, Independent Scholar, UK, Citizenship, Patriotism, and Political Economy

Panel 3 | Room: Edward Street 103 | Chair: Yaar Peretz

Jeff Noonan, University of Windsor, Canada, Undemocratic Democracy: The Return of Right-Wing Populism in America and Europe

Nerma Cridge, Cambridge School of Architecture and Architectural Association London, UK, Building the Wall: Architectural Response to Trump

Session 5: 2.30pm – 4.00pm

Panel 1 | Room: Edward Street 102 | Chair: Aleksi Lohtaja

Gavin Rae, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain, Agamben, Resistance, and the Coming Politics: The Problem of Biopolitical Agency

Tom Claes, University of Gent, Belgium, Sexual Rights and/as Sexual Politics

Panel 2 | Room: Edward Street 103 | Chair: Jill Poeggel

Mark McGovern, Edge Hill University, UK, “Shuffle Off This Mortal Coil, You C***”: Of Civilians, Barbarians and Law

Jonathan Yong Tienxhi, London School of Economics, UK, The Myth of the Lazy Native in Contemporary Malaysia: Capitalism, Indolence and Neoliberal Culture

Panel 3 | Room: Edward Street 104 | Chair: Lukas Slothuus

Yaar Dagan Peretz, University of Exeter, UK, The Perils of Empire and Neoliberalism: the Case of Settler Colonialism in the West Bank

Raph Schlembach, University of Brighton, UK, Myth and Identity: The Revolutionary Right’s Intellectual Pursuit of a European Empire

Friday 15th September

Session 6: 10.30am – 12.00noon

Panel 1 | Room: Edward Street 102 | Chair: Carl Fraser

Lukas Slothuus, University of Edinburgh, UK, Disobedience Reinforcing the Status Quo? A Critique of Dominant Accounts of Civil Disobedience

Pierre-Alexandre Cardinal, McGill University, Canada, From Nation State to Islamic Republic; Iran and the Decolonial Praxis of Islamism

Panel 2 | Room: Edward Street 103 | Chair: Jeff Noonan

Abdus Sajud, KU Leuven, Belgium, Resistance and Revolt: A Reading of Hardt & Negri with a Critique Using Balibar

Cathy Bergin, University of Brighton, UK, Transnational Resistance: Anti-Fascism and African American Volunteers in the International Brigades

Panel 3 | Room: Edward Street 104 | Chair: Cathy Bergin

Anna Ikeda, Rutgers University, USA, Understanding Anti-U.S. Military Base Movements: A Civil Resistance Perspective

Lars Cornelissen, University of Brighton, UK, “It is Anti-Colonialism Which is the Problem”: Colonialism, Self-Determination, and Cold-War Neoliberalism

Session 7: 12.00pm – 13.30pm

Panel 1 | Room: Edward Street 102 | Chair: Gavin Rae

Dimitris Gakis, KU Leuven, Belgium, Reification and Immaterial Production

Megan Archer, University of Brighton, UK, The Neo-Imperial Machine: Logistics, Development, and Techniques of Extraction

Panel 2 | Room: Edward Street 103 | Chair: David Webster

Susan Lucas, Holy Trinity East Ham, UK, Revisiting the Welfare State: Or, on Not Quite being a Post-Liberal

David Martin, University of Brighton, UK, Surplus, Capitalism, and Resistance

Session 8: 2.30pm – 4.00pm

Panel 1 | Room: Edward Street 102 | Chair: Susan Lucas

Leonardo Sias, University Southampton, UK, Subvertising and the production of dissenting desires

Guilel Treiber, KU Leuven, Belgium, Setting a Limit to a Limitless Power: A Foucauldian Revolt

Panel 2 | Room: Edward Street 103 | Chair: Paul Reynolds

Mathias Krams, University of Marburg, Germany, Challenging Neoliberal Structures through Counter-Hegemonic Framing Strategies: An Elaboration of the Power Context of Framing Processes

Carl Fraser, Situation Architecture, UK, Critical Spatial Practice