Utopia: Wreckage

Every historical attempt to construct society after an Idea teaches: where utopia is, there wreckage will come into being. So we have been told, and do in part believe. The empire of capitalist parliamentarism, sovereign police, and conventional scepticism is built with the ruins of futures past. This symposium invites four inventive, provocative, and engaged thinkers to reflect upon utopia and its wreckages, to help us understand the valences of realisation and ruination, of wreaking and wrecking, within socialist/post-socialist, sovereign/post-sovereign, imperial/post-imperial, feminist and queer political programmes.

Organised by Brigitte Bargetz, Ben Dawson, Kit Heintzman, Christine Hentschel, and Gal Kirn.

Programme

15.00-15.30 Welcome

15.30-16.00 Introduction

16.00-17.00 Boris Buden (Berlin): Dislocation of Utopia. In-between Capitalism and Socialism

17.00-18.00 Bini Adamczak (Frankfurt a. M.): The Feeling of Revolution. Queer Questions of 1917

18.00-18.30 Break

18.30-19.30 Daniel Loick (Frankfurt a. M.): Post-Sovereign Politics. Lessons from Benjamin

19.30-20.30 Karen Tongson (Los Angeles): Inland Emperors. Sexuality at the End of the Suburbs

Boris Buden is a writer and cultural critic. He studied philosophy in Zagreb and cultural theory at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Among his many publications are Barikade (Zagreb, 1996) and Zone des Übergangs. Vom Ende des Postkommunismus (Frankfurt/Main, 2009). Among his translations into Croatian are two books of Sigmund Freud.

Bini Adamczak is an unstable alliance of everyday reproduction modes, unwanted heritages and quarrelsome spectres, such as deconstructivist feminisms and the orthodox critique of value. She’s a performer, visual artist and independent author of borderlining texts such as Kommunismus. Kleine Geschichte wie alles anders wird (Münster, 2004) and Gestern Morgen. Über die Einsamkeit kommunistischer Gespenster und die Rekonstruktion der Zukunft (Münster, 2007).

Daniel Loick teaches social and political philosophy at Goethe Universität Frankfurt. His book on sovereignty, Ironien des Politischen. Elemente einer kritischen Theorie der Souveränität (Frankfurt/Main, 2011) is forthcoming this fall. He is also co-organizer of the international conference Re-Thinking Marx at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin.

Karen Tongson is Associate Professor of English and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. Her book on race, sexuality, popular culture and the suburbs, Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries (New York), is forthcoming in August 2011. She is co-series editor for Postmillennial Pop, and is also co-editor-in-chief of The Journal of Popular Music Studies.

Place: ICI Berlin

Time: Thursday, 16 June 2011

In English

The workshop is open to the public. There is no registration but if you are interested in attending please notify Christine.Hentschel(at)ici-berlin.org by June 8, 2011.