“Thinking With Wendy Brown – Democracy in Nihilistic Times”

  Please register to attend here

To attend one or both of the keynotes (Paul Gilroy) (31 March at 11.15 am) (Wendy Brown) (2 April at 14.00) please use PGTALK or WBTALK to register

Map – https://maps.app.goo.gl/iRCoyg1tr7crhpdi9

 

Monday 31^st March – Wednesday 2^nd of April 2025

Grand Parade, University of Brighton, UK

Keynote Speakers

•  Wendy Brown (UPS Foundation Professor in the School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton)

• Paul Gilroy (Professor of Humanities, Institute for Advanced Studies, University College London)

• Robyn Marasco (Professor of Political Science, Hunter College, City University of New York)

• Debaditya Bhattacharya (Professor of Literature, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi)

• Eva von Redecker (Philosopher and non-fiction writer)

Since the publication of Manhood and Politics in 1988, Wendy Brown’s interventions in critical political theory have consistently developed a critical diagnosis of our times. In creative, sometimes counter-intuitive ways Brown’s work draws on a range of traditions, directing critique to its own shortcomings, while disclosing the undercurrents that shape political power in the present.

In the past decade this has culminated with an acute critique of the neo-liberal undoing of the demos (across education, law and governance) and the related rise of right-wing populisms.

At this conference we engage with Wendy Brown’s wide-ranging works to reflect on democratic forms of politics that escape their imbrication in regimes of coloniality, class and gender and/or address the climate crisis that shadows all contemporary critical thought. Themes might include but are not limited to:

• Reanimating democratic politics in the 21^st century

• The declensions of neo-liberal politics

• Gender and right-wing populisms

• Power, political rationalities, sovereignty and hegemony

• Left melancholia

• Critique, freedom and equality

• Empire, race and legacies of coloniality

• Democracy and climate change

• Political identity: subjectivity, hegemony, desire

• Values, thought and action

• Higher Education after neoliberalism

Please register here

 

University of Brighton, Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics, and Ethics (CAPPE) and School of Humanities and Social Science,

 

Thinking with Wendy Brown:

Democracy in Nihilistic Times

 

Monday 31^st March – Wednesday 2^nd of April 2025

Grand Parade, University of Brighton, UK

 

Monday 31^st of March: Welcome to Conference

10.45: M2 Grand Parade

 

Keynote Lecture 1, 11.00 – 12.30:

Sallis Benney Lecture Theatre, Grand Parade,

Chair German Primera

 

Political Eschatologies of Mismanaged Decline

Paul Gilroy

(Institute of Advanced Studies,

University College London)

(Followed by conversation with Wendy Brown)

 

 

Lunch | 12.30 – 13.30 | Grand Parade Cafeteria

 

Session 1: 13.30 – 15.30

 

Panel 1 Democratic Futures

Room: G63 Grand Parade | Chair: Tom Pryce

 

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?

 

 

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 M2, Grand Parade | Chair: Jo Kellond

 

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 homo-nationalism.

 

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 G4, Grand Parade | Chair: Isaac Thornton

 

David Ventura, University of Newcastle: Two Ambivalent Figurations of Refusal in Édouard Glissant’s Poetics.

 

Ameet Ubhi, City University London: Towards an Echopoesis.

 

Hannah Voegele, Freie Universität Berlin: Feminism and Sexual Statecraft: Crafting Consent and Coloniality.

 

Maria Socorro Perez, Ateneo de Manila University, 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

Room: G4 Grand Parade | Chair: Eloise O’Dwyer-Armary

 

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.

 

Joanna Kellond, University of Brighton:  Homo-Oeconomicus, Homo-Politicus or Homines Curans?

 

 

Panel 2 The Politics of Neoliberalism

Room: M2, Grand Parade | Chair: Viktoria Huegel

 

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? The Last Neoliberal Assault on the Social.

 

 

 

Panel 3 Nihilism, Politics and Technology

Room: G63 Grand Parade | Chair: Luke Edmeads

 

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: Toward Immanent Meaning: Wendy Brown, Neoliberalism, and the Path Beyond Nihilism

 

Toby Lovat, University of Brighton “The goal is lacking; an answer to the question ‘why?’” On Brown’s Post Nihilist Values.

 

 

 

18.00-19.00: Wine and Canape Reception:

Grand Parade CAFÉ and M2

 

 

TUESDAY 1^st of April

 

Late Registration | 8.30 – 9:15 | Grand Parade Foyer

 

 

Keynote Lectures 2 and 3: 9.15 – 11.15

M2 Grand Parade | Chair: Hannah Voegele

 

Nihilism as possessive diremption from life.

Eva von Redecker

 

Democracy after the ‘Anthropocene’.

Mark Devenney

(Followed by conversation with Wendy Brown)

 

Tea and Coffee Grand Parade Café: 11.15-11.30

 

 

Session 3:  11.30 – 13.00

 

Panel 1 Resistant Temporalities | Room: G63,

Grand Parade | Chair: Isaac Thornton

 

Giovanni Battista Soda, Vita Salute San Raffaele University: 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: M2, Grand Parade | Chair: German Primera

 

Rinella Cere, Sheffield Hallam University, UK: Community: Notes on a Slippery Concept.

 

Yagmur Kizalay Bicer, University of Brighton, UK: De-territorialisation of Democracy.

 

Jacques Lezra, University of California Riverside, US: Magna parens terra est: The logic of catastrophism.

 

 

Panel 3: Authoritarian Freedom

Room G4, Grand Parade | Chair: Luke Edmeads

 

Axel Rivera Osorio, Tahe National Autonomous University of Mexico: The abuse of the discourses of freedom by the extreme right.

 

Kat Zacharek, University of Brighton, UK: Nostalgia and Melancholy: A force for right-wing mobilization

 

Viktoria Huegel, University of Vienna, Austria: “Only a god can save us”? Charismatic leadership in authoritarian times

 

Lunch| Grand Parade Cafeteria | 13.00 – 14.00

 

Session 4: 14.00 – 16.00

 

Panel 1Right Wing Populisms

Room: M2 Grand Parade | Chair: Lucile Richard

 

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.

 

Vince Aguspina, University of Essex, UK: What colour is your Bugatti? On Andrew Tate and the Neoliberal Fantasy.

 

Chris Griffin, University of Brighton: Countersigning Democracy: Exclusion, Coloniality, and Dispossessive Citizenship.

 

 

Panel 2 | Democratic Politics after the ‘Anthropocene’

Room G63: Grand Parade | Chair: Mark Devenney

 

Stijn De Cauwer, University of Leiden, Netherlands: From the Wolf to the World: French Environmental Philosophy in 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.

 

Alice Gibson: Solidarity in the Triple Planetary Crisis.

 

 

Panel 3 | The Contested Politics of Knowledge

Room: G4 Grand Parade | Chair: Tom Pryce

 

Peter Conlin, University of Nottingham: Statistics, Data Behaviourism and Nihilism (Songs of Sortilege)

 

Bob Brecher, University of Brighton, Emeritus Professor: Anathema: Anglophone Universities under neoliberalism.

 

Kim Yutuc, University of Leeds:  It Takes a University: The University of Leeds: Fraternity-Related Violence, and the Genealogy of an Absence.

 

Isaac Thornton, University of Brighton: The place of international students within British Higher Education in nihilistic times.

 

 

Coffee & Tea | Grand Parade Cafe 16.00 – 16.30

 

Session 5: 16.30-18.00

 

Panel 1: Refiguring Political Theory

Room: M2 Grand Parade | Chair Hannah Voegele

 

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 Democratic Futures?

Room G63 Grand Parade | Chair: Eloise O’Dwyer  

 

Timothy Wei Bin Siew and Dr Bernstein, University of Manchester, UK: A Harm Alleviating Democracy Against Political Nihilism

 

Christina Miliou Theocharaki, University of Sussex, UK: ‘Rights-washing’ when providing legal aid in the field of migration in Greece.

 

Arianne Shahvisi, University of Brighton: Do Humans have Moral Status?

 Panel 3: Freedom after Neoliberalism

Room G4, Grand Parade | Chair: Jo Kellond

 Samia Mohammad, University of Bremen: Freedom after Authoritarian Neoliberalism?

 Luke Edmeads, University of Brighton, UK: ‘In it for Myself’: Liberal Morality in Neoliberal Times.

 Ante Andabak, University of Zagreb: Freedom and the Necessity of Politics in Marx – A Comradely Response to Wendy Brown.

 

 

 

 

 

19.00: Conference Dinner:

New Era, Queens Road, Brighton

 

 

WEDNESDAY 2^nd of April

 

Conference Keynote: 9.30-11.30

M2 Grand Parade, Chair: Jo Kellond

 

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)

(Followed by conversation with Wendy Brown)

 

Session 6: 12.00 to 13.30

 

Panel 1: Wounded Attachments and Affective Politics

Room M2, Grand Parade | Chair:  Viktoria Huegel

 

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 Tragedy, Comedy and Melancholia in Nihilistic Times

Room G4, Grand Parade. Chair: German Primera

 

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 University of 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.

 

 

Lunch 13.30 – 14.30| Grand Parade Cafeteria

 

 

Grand Parade: Sallis Benney Lecture Theatre:

14.30-16.30

 

Listening for Political Freedom

Wendy Brown

(Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton)