Call for Papers Reimagining Democratic Politics in the Contemporary Event
- Time:
- 9:00-16:00
- Date:
- 2025-07-03 09:00:00 2025-07-04 16:00:00
- Venue:
- Centre for Democratic Futures, ºÚÁÏÉç
Abstract Submission Deadline Extended to 18th April 2025
Event details
Democratic politics today faces an acute global crisis. Whether couched in terms of democratic backsliding, the rise of right-wing anti-democratic movements, or a transformation of the paradigms of liberal-democracy towards democratic authoritarianism, democratic institutions, political projects and forms of life are under attack. On the one hand, rapidly accelerating ecological collapse driven by neoliberal logics of exploitation and accumulation intensify and exacerbate this crisis. On the other, routinised procedures of politics ‘as usual’ - couched within the paradigm of liberal-democracy – prove inadequate for countering these threats to democratic politics. The concern is, therefore, as much an impoverishment of democratic politics as it is an impoverishment of democratic imagination.
What our conjuncture calls for, then, is a reimagination of democratic politics in ways that make it possible to respond to the challenges it faces. This work is underway; wherever democratic politics is threatened, we also find practices of radical democratic imagination and enactment that refuse to fold, backslide, or collapse. Practices that refuse authoritarian rigidity and order in favour of a pluralising and diversifying suppleness. Against this background, the present symposium aims to bring together scholars and practitioners from across disciplinary boundaries to reflect on – and learn from – these practices of democratic enactment and imagination. Over two days, the discussion seeks to build dialogues between practices of democratic imagination and practices of democratic enactment or prefiguration – without presupposing, however, the necessity or givenness of any rigid binary.
We thus invite contributions that respond to the ongoing crises of democratic politics. We encourage interdisciplinarity, and welcome contributions from the heterogenous sites, problematisations and questions concerned with reimagining democratic politics, broadly construed. The symposium is organised around four over-arching thematic ‘scenes’, though contributions reaching across and beyond these are also welcome:
· Fugitivity and the politics of refusal
· Anticolonial imaginaries and politics
· Artistic practice and performance
· Democratic innovations
Contributions may be theoretical, empirical, artistic, literary, or experimental. Please submit an abstract, proposal, or outline of your intended contribution of up to 300 words to T.Gandhi@soton.ac.uk by the 18th April, 2025. Please do share your proposal in another format (video, images, audio, etc.) if text is inappropriate or unsuitable.
Due to limited funding, we will unfortunately not be able to provide participants with support for travel or accommodation for this event. Please write to Tanay Gandhi at T.Gandhi@soton.ac.uk or Vanissa Wanick at vwv1n12@esc.soton.ac.uk with any questions.