"Ruptures" will be held on April 11, 2014. Keynote address by Andreas Kalyvas, New School for Social Research.
Our young century has been one of political ruptures. Formerly resilient regimes across the Middle East have fallen to popular mobilization and Western military intervention; counter-revolution is afoot, civil wars rage, and others loom. In post-industrial democracies, economic crises and contagion have bred grassroots rebellion against austerity and neoliberalism, raising the spectre of a renascent left in the very heart of global capitalism. The electoral success of nationalist and xenophobic political parties in Europe has exposed the fragility of multicultural societies and has threatened to undermine the project of European unification. Fears of illegal immigration and terrorism have resulted in the increased securitization of borders and widespread surveillance of citizens and foreign nationals alike. On a less tectonic scale, U.S. politics has witnessed judicial ruptures that threaten hard-won civil rights gains and buttress the legal fiction of corporate personhood. Public opinion has shifted decisively on issues from gay marriage to marijuana legalization, while demographic change has stoked heightened speculation about coming electoral realignments. The past may not even be past, but the future has become increasingly unpredictable.
This one-day conference at the University of Pennsylvania will deal with the concept of ruptures—those that have occurred, those that might occur, and how our theories and methods can adequately identify and conceptualize “the rupture” in contradistinction to more gradualist or evolutionary understandings of politics and political change.
For more information, please visit: http://ruptures2014.tumblr.com